Yellow and orange and sunny

USG was packed early this morning with folks who were loading up their weekender totes with ears of corn and berries. The morning was beautiful and sunny, and the fruits and veggies were orange and yellow, as if in homage. The bright yellow chard is breathtakingly lovely! (Also yellow, but not pictured: gold nugget potatoes, corn on the cob).

A perfect morning:
2 ears bicolor corn
1 lb. yellow Swiss chard
1 pt. orange heirloom cherry tomatoes
1 lb. green and yellow beans
1 lb. sugar snap peas
1 bunch red kale
1 lb. gold nugget potatoes
1 head Rocambole garlic
4 zucchini (2 green, 2 golden)
1 lb. apricots
1.5 lbs. peaches
1 lb. cherries
Total spent: $45

The peaches (tree-ripened) are lovely and juicy, but still working up to perfect flavor - it's still early in their season. Last week's apricots were so delicious that I got twice as many this time. If only I had taken that canning class at Brooklyn Kitchen last week...but it was a Sunday, and I had to work. They assured me they'd have another one soon, though...fingers crossed it's in time for me to put up some peaches, tomatoes, and apricots.

I've already got the whole head of Rocambole garlic on the stove in tomato sauce (with last week's basil - oops!). All the snap peas and most of the beans will end up blanched in lunches, but I will sautee some of the green beans with garlic and red pepper for dinner tonight - paired with the potatoes, and preceded by corn on the cob and a salad of sweet, juicy tomatoes with goat cheese and Italian parsley.

That chard! It's so lovely - the contrast of the fresh green with that bright yellow - that I want to come up with some way of showcasing it. Perhaps I can combine it in a recipe with some of the golden zucchini to highlight the sunniness of both vegetables.

Last week I had a bug for pasta salad, probably due in large part to the delicious pesto I bought at the USG, as well as the excruciating heat. Here are two variations I made, both great for packing in lunches, because the flavors blend in the fridge - they're not recipes as much as assembly suggestions:

Tortellini Pesto Salad
tortellini (I used Trader Joe's artichoke tortellini, but your cheese would work)
pesto (1-2 tbsp per serving)
kale
cherry tomatoes (as many as you want)
goat cheese (2 tbsp per serving)
salt and pepper to taste

Tear kale into approx 2" pieces, steam it, and set aside. Don't throw away the water you steamed it with - add more water and use that to cook the pasta (saves nutrients). Drain pasta and rinse gently with cold water until cool. Chop kale into thin strips; halve cherry tomatoes. Add pesto, pasta, kale, cherry tomatoes, and about 3/4 of the goat cheese to a bowl; season with salt and pepper and toss. Just before serving, crumble the rest of the goat cheese on top.

Penne Pasta Salad
penne
pesto (1-2 tbsp per serving)
summer squash (about 1 medium zucchini per serving)
Italian veggie sausage (Tofurky andField Roast are my favorites)
goat cheese (2 tbsp. per serving)
salt and pepper to taste

Dice zucchini, steam it until just barely tender (err on the side of crisp) and set aside. Again - use the steam water for the pasta. Drain pasta and rinse gently with cold water until cool. Dice and sautee veggie sausage. Add pesto, pasta, zucchini, sausage, and 3/4 of goat cheese to a bowl; season with salt and pepper and toss. Just before serving, crumble the rest of the goat cheese on top.

Going overboard...

...was my greenmarket m.o. today. Though strawberries are already gone, the amazing July selection at the USG today more than made up for it.

I love summer:
1 quart cherry tomatoes
1 lb. sugar snap peas
2 cousa squashes
1 bunch red Russian kale
1 bunch rainbow chard
1 bunch carrots
1 bunch Italian parsley
1 bunch basil
1.5 lbs. cherries
5 apricots
Total spent: $34

The plural of "squash" is giving me a headache. Does "squashes" mean only "multiple varieties of squash," or can I use it to mean "two fruits of the squash plant"? I think my point comes across regardless.

I'm very glad sugar snap peas are still here - they're our summer staple vegetable so far. I've been blanching them for 75 seconds, shocking them in ice water, then packing them in lunches with a few grinds of sea salt...and then, more often than not, we have them again (prepared the same way) with dinner.

I'm excited to have bought my first tomatoes of summer! One of my plans is to have them in a pesto pasta salad with cousa squash, goat cheese, and Italian parsley - with fresh basil to garnish. I bought some pesto at the greenmarket because I don't have a food processor to make my own. The basil will also go into some homemade tomato sauce.

Most of the other veggies are self-explanatory - greens for adding to burritos, pasta, and anywhere else I can fit them in, and the carrots for having raw or steamed with lunch. The cherries are from Terhune Orchards, which is also where I get my apples in fall - they have the best cherries at the greenmarket (they also had the best asparagus when it was around). I'm very happy that apricots are starting to show up; a few places even had peaches. Though these are two of the fruits I most want to can this summer, so that clock is ticking quickly. We'll see if I can fit in a class and get the gear in time to put up some fruit this summer.

Union Square Greenmarket: Tomatoes, tomatoes, tomatoes

Today was all about tomatoes at the USG. Multicolored, bumpy, speckled heirloom varieties were everywhere. For whatever reason, I never find myself eating tomatoes, so I usually resist them - but today's were just too tasty and well-priced (for heirlooms) to pass up. And, of course, they're quite lovely.



A smaller haul than usual:
1 lb. apricots
5 yellow peaches
3 ears bicolor corn
1 lb. cherries
4 small zucchini
3 heirloom tomatoes
3 poblano peppers
total spent: $22

The apricots and peaches are in a big paper bag, ripening (I'll be crossing my fingers that they don't all "arrive" at once, or I will incur a severe stomachache trying to eat them all).

Tonight, I'd like to make a version of the "ratatouille vs. succotash" I had last week, but with just the zucchini and corn sauteed together, and fresh tomatoes sliced on top, maybe served over rice.

I'll roast the poblanos and use them in a big pot of black beans, or maybe I'll try one of them, roasted, with a tomato and an avocado in a fresh salsa.

Meanwhile, I still haven't eaten last week's radishes! The cream-cheese plan fell apart, because yesterday I worked late and then went on a movie date. I'm just going to have to try them raw and plain, like my mom suggested. More news about this later.

Apricots!

I have been eating the apricots one-by-one as they ripened this week, but I knew that at some point, I'd have half a dozen ripe apricots on my hands. Well, that point was yesterday evening, and I made the ultimate sacrifice of eating all of them. Luckily, they were extremely delicious. The variety I have seems to tend toward mealiness, but that translates into a nice firmness when ripe, and intensely concentrated flavor. I still prefer peaches, but these were an acceptable alternative.

In other news, we had the yellow snap beans tonight alongside pan-fried tofu and brown rice (a recipe from A Year In A Vegetarian Kitchen). I blanched them in boiling water for about a minute, then cooled them down quickly with cold water. After the tofu was done, I just added a little bit of olive oil to the remaining garlicky glaze in the pan and sauteed the beans for about a minute. They still had a bit of crunch to them, which was perfect for how fresh and sweet they tasted. I was planning to photograph our meals, which were plated quite artistically, but I was too hungry to wait.

And I haven't touched the radishes yet. The best-sounding "recipes" I've found are for cream-cheese-and-radish sandwiches, so I'll pick up some cream cheese tomorrow and get brave fast.

She's like a rainbow

It was a colorful day at the greenmarket! I got yellow zucchini, yellow beans, and red carrots...and it seemed like everything, from tomatoes to radishes, was available in at least three colors. Radishes were regular red, pink, or white; tomatoes red, green, yellow, or multi-striped; carrots came in orange, red, purple, and white.



Anna and the amazing technicolor produce:
1 yellow zucchini
1 bunch red carrots
1 lb. yellow snap beans
1 bunch red radishes
1 lb. apricots
1.5 lbs. sweet cherries
1 pint strawberries
1/4 lb. salad greens
1 bunch shallots
1 head Rocambole garlic
4 ears bicolor corn
3 tomatoes
Total spent: $30 exactly

It's been so long since I've had fresh apricots that I had to call my mom to find out how to tell when they're ripe. (She said it's the same as for peaches.) We also talked about the radishes: I'm planning to find a recipe that includes them cooked, but the idea of cooking radishes is anathema to Mom. "Just cut off the stalk and eat them," she said, "or cut them up in salads." I think I'll try both.

Cherry season will be over in another week, and there were only two vendors that had any sweet cherries at all. I had to hunt and peck to find 1.5 lbs of relatively perfect ones...they're so sweet and delicious - I hate that they'll be gone so soon.

The corn I'm planning to pack for a picnic tomorrow, pre-cooked (it's sweet enough to be great without any condiments), I'll make a fresh tomato sauce this evening with the tomatoes and some of my long-suffering basil plant's leaves, and the zucchini and carrots I want to use in a multi-colored stirfy later in the week. I'll keep you posted.