Applesauce

Our Food Project CSA includes a fruit share in the fall. The first week's share included gorgeous Paula Red apples, which look like Macs, but have a slightly firmer texture and a slightly less sweet taste. Perfect, in other words, for the season's first applesauce.

Homemade applesauce is one of those things that sounds like it's going to be a lot of trouble, and then once you've done it, you realize two very important things:

1) It's really easy to make; and

2) It's almost impossible to screw it up.

All you need to do is wash, core and cut up the apples, toss them into a big pot over medium-high heat, add a splash of lemon juice, a sprinkle of sugar, and perhaps a bit of water, and then let them get mushy. I don't peel the apples, because I like a pinkish tint to my applesauce, and also because I'm really pretty lazy. If you want yellow applesauce, you'll have to be industrious and get to peeling. You go ahead and have fun with that; I, for one, just can't be bothered.*

Here are my lovely little Paula Reds, on their way to becoming applesauce. These are small apples, and so I cut most of them in half, quartering a few of the larger ones. I'm telling you, it's quick business.

After you've got everything into the pot, pop in some freshly squeezed lemon juice (half a lemon's worth ought to do it). As for the sugar, I like to be stingy with it, because I want my applesauce to taste like apples. I put in maybe a teaspoon to a tablespoon of sugar for every 8-12 apples, none at all if the apples are sweet enough to begin with. I've seen recipes that suggest up to 1/2 cup of sugar *faint*, so play with it and see what you like. I also sometimes add a cinnamon stick or two at this point, but I think that does more for fragrance than for flavor. Then heat the fruit for 20-30 minutes, until it's nice and soft.

At this point, you can just mash everything with a potato masher for nice chunky sauce, but then you've got to fish the peels out with a fork, and that's too much trouble for me. I put it all through a food mill. Once the apples are smushed, however it's done, I like to add a teaspoon of vanilla, a sprinkle of cinnamon, and (ssh) a generous pat of butter, and stir everything in while it's still warm.

After that, you can just go ahead and continue to dump cinnamon in there to your heart's content. See? Wasn't that easy?

Homemade applesauce freezes nicely, if you can get to that point. Ours usually doesn't hang around long enough to make it to the freezer. I've tried making applesauce and canning it, but haven't come up with anything that withstands the additional heating time in the canner well enough for me to prefer it to freezing.

*If you have one of these fun apple corer/peeler/slicer gizmos, go for it. My kids love to use ours, but I usually save that for apple pie projects.

I Know, Everyone's Doing It, But...

OK, I caved. After seeing Julie and Julia a couple of weeks ago, I kept pulling out my Child cookbooks and thinking about diving in. I opened Baking with Julia and made some nice buttermilk muffins, but I really couldn't summon the courage to face anything from Mastering the Art of French Cooking - it all just seems too much, especially on a warm summer evening. And of course everyone else is doing the Julia thing now, which makes it seem silly and redundant for me to chime with one more voice in praise of Mrs. Child.

But...today, I returned home from our CSA pickup laden with fresh eggplants, zucchini, onions, parsley and plum tomatoes. Shortly thereafter, I found this in my garden (OK, not really a garden - in one of my Earthboxes on the deck):

This pepper is particularly beautiful to me because I've not had much success growing my own food. I've managed a few feeble herbs from time to time, and I had one summer of successful cherry tomatoes (successful in that the plants produced nicely, but I can't say much about their taste, because our dog harvested most of them), but that's about it. The Earthbox thing seems almost too good to be true, especially for someone like me.

At any rate, faced with this particular combination of vegetables, I felt I really had no choice. So I dragged out a splattered copy of Julia Child's recipe for Ratatouille (yep, the old complicated one from Mastering) and braced myself.

I made a huge mess, and used too many pots and pans and dishes and spent far too much time peeling tomatoes and measuring zucchini slices and thinking this surely wasn't worth the trouble - which is what I think every time I try a Julia Child recipe. And then I tasted it. Damn. This ratatouille is one of the best things ever produced in my kitchen.

The only real issue I have with the recipe is that it allegedly serves 6-8 people, and I could quite easily have eaten the entire casserole. That's 6-8 French people, who have a much more reasonable attitude about food and who sit and savor their meals and eat small portions of fabulous things. A nice way to go about it, if you have the time.

Oh...what about yesterday's angst and resolve to work to fight hunger, not to wax poetic about food, you ask? Don't worry, I'm still feeling guilty and still determined to do something worthwhile. But sometimes food just tastes really good, and you can't fight it.

It's Easy Being Green (if you're salsa)

It's been too long since I've written here. I spent a while during mid-summer feeling sort of down on food, after reading David Kessler's The End of Overeating and many articles on the bleak realities of American agriculture. The idea that we're making ourselves sick with so much of what we call "food" disturbs me deeply, and for a time I just couldn't bring myself to think about frivolous foodie joy.

I feel better now, though, because it's really hard to be down on food in August. Perfect sweet corn, gorgeous bumpy stripy green, purple and orange heirloom tomatoes, all the basil you'd ever want and then some...it's just too good.

And yesterday, my CSA pickup included a quart of tomatillos, which means I can make salsa. I've got these beautiful green treasures roasting on the grill right now, along with some poblanos, a banana pepper, onions and garlic. I'm loosely following Rick Bayless' recipe for Roasted Tomatillo Salsa, without really measuring anything. I'll freeze some of the salsa, and it will be wonderful in January - bright and piquant and reminiscent of a day like today, 90 degrees and muggy and blindingly sunny (all of which will seem so appealing when I'm wiping slushy frozen mud off my shoes).

You Put the Lime in the Coconut (really)

Another lovely Food Project CSA pickup yesterday afternoon. This week, there were bins overflowing with dark green spinach, and fragrant new cilantro in the fields, just next to the sugar snap peas that my 4 year old happily picked, tasted, and immediately rejected as being "too green." Oh, well.

This gives me the opportunity to make one of my favorite cold summer soups, based on a recipe from raw food guru Dr. Ritamarie Loscalzo. It does require me to stray a bit from my loyalty to locally available produce, but seeing as I'm not ever going to be willing to give up avocado or coconut, I'll live with the guilt. This is really refreshing when it's hot, and you can adjust the spice to your own taste. All of the measurements are pretty forgiving, so if there's something you don't like here, leave it out; if there's something you love, double it.

This is part of a series of wonderful blended soups and smoothies that I've discovered in the past few months in a journey through the world of raw food diets (which I've dabbled in but haven't fully embraced - more about that later). You don't have to be a raw foodist to like this recipe, though. If you really don't want to be a raw foodist, leave most of the water out of the soup, add more avocado, and serve it as a sauce over grilled flank steak.


Spicy Lime-Avocado-Coconut Soup

2-3 handfuls spinach leaves
1-2 handfuls fresh cilantro
1/2 large or 1 small avocado
3 tablespoons young coconut meat (or cream of coconut)
juice of 2 limes
1/2 red or yellow bell pepper, or 1 poblano pepper, roughly chopped
1/2 small jalapeno pepper, seeds removed (or, if you're brave, use something hotter like a Thai chile, Habanero or Scotch Bonnet)
1-3 cloves garlic
coarse salt to taste

Place all of the ingredients in a blender with about 1/2 cup water and puree until smooth, adding water as necessary to adjust the consistency.

As an added bonus, when you make the soup, you can annoy your friends and family by singing or playing Harry Nilsson's "Coconut" or, for a really special occasion, you can drag out the Muppets version.

Lush.

This is the lettuce I brought home yesterday after our first CSA pickup from The Food Project in Lincoln, MA. I love everything about this organization. The food is just gorgeous - hence the beginnings of my summer obsession with photographing vegetables in strange and intimate ways, which befuddles my children. But look at the color! The Food Project's philosophy, which values sustainable agriculture, community development, and educating young people, is so completely wonderful that it's sort of hard to believe. All that and garlic scapes, too...

Yesterday's share was small, but with such promise of summer: lettuce, bok choy, radishes, scallions, chive blossoms and mint. The herbs have me thinking about compound butters, but more about that later. The lettuce, in addition to being as beautiful as any flower, was crisp and full of flavor. I grew up thinking that the bland white leaves of iceberg lettuce that sat in our refrigerator for, apparently, weeks without noticeable change were what lettuce was supposed to be. I feel a bit weepy when I think about BLTs made with dessicated bacon, iceberg lettuce, spongy white bread, mealy tomatoes (that had been refrigerated - shudder) and Miracle Whip. Fortunately, those childhood experiences didn't leave me permanently scarred, and I was willing to give lettuce another try later in life.

When I've reached my limit on BLTs and salads, I turn to the lettuce wrap to renew my faith in this leafy green. I like to use big lettuce leaves as containers for what might otherwise build a really great sandwich (and I get to feel self-righteous about it, too, for abstaining from bread). My favorite lettuce wrap fillings:

- a mixture of browned ground pork and ground turkey or veal (in equal proportions), seasoned with sauteed chopped onion, soy sauce and oyster sauce (about 1-2 T of each sauce per pound of meat)
- avocado, cucumber and very thinly sliced seared tuna or raw sushi grade tuna, with just a splash of hot sauce or wasabi
- rice noodles (mai fun), mung bean sprouts, cucumber and mint leaves, with Pungent Dipping Sauce (see recipe below)
- any mix of julienned raw vegetables and sprouts with ginger-miso salad dressing
- very thinly sliced fennel, a bit of grated ginger, turkey breast and beets

Needless to say, the possibilites for lettuce wraps are endless.

Pungent Dipping Sauce

I love this sauce and will happily find just about any excuse to eat it. You can dip carrots, jicama or radishes in it and slurp away, but it's really best with some sort of Asian spring or summer roll.

• 2 T fish sauce
  
• 1/4 cup water
• 2 T fresh lime juice
• 1 clove garlic, minced
• 1 T cane sugar or white sugar
  
• dried red pepper flakes, to taste

In a small sauce pan over medium-low heat, mix the fish sauce, water, lime juice and sugar, stirring, until the sugar is dissolved. Add the garlic and continue to heat, stirring, for about 1 minute. Add the red pepper flakes and remove from heat. Allow the sauce to cool to room temperature before serving with lettuce wraps, spring rolls, or over grilled meats. The sauce will keep, covered and refrigerated, for about a week.