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Ratatouille
Makes 3 1/2 quarts
The sweetness of the vegetables and the fresh thyme create a naturally rich and delicious flavor. This is a wonderful way to use up fresh produce at the end of the summer. Feel free to add whatever vegetables you have on hand.
1/8 cup extra virgin olive oil
10 cloves of garlic, chopped
3 onions, diced
3 cups diced assorted peppers (sweet red Italian, green and red bell)
1 ½ cup diced carrots
½ cup celery (4 stalks)
2 cups diced eggplant (salted)
½ cup green beans, roughly cut
2 yellow squash, diced
1 zucchini, diced
4 tomatoes, skins removed and diced
1 teaspoon fresh thyme leaves
1 teaspoon cumin
4 teaspoon kosher salt
1 teaspoon dried oregano
2 cans kidney beans, drained and rinsed
8 ounces brown lentils, cooked al dente for 8 minutes
Advanced Prep Work
Cut an eggplant into rounds. Lay the rounds out on a paper towel and sprinkle with kosher salt. After about 15 minutes, you will be able to add to the stew.
Remove the skins from the tomato. If you have a soft skin peeler, you can use it to remove the skins. Otherwise, you can blanch the tomatoes in boiling water, scoring the tops first, and then removing the skins.
Cook the lentils in boiling water for 8 minutes, drain and run under cool water.
Cooking Instructions
In a large stock pot, heat olive oil on a medium heat. Saute the garlic for just a minute and add the onions. Season with 2 teaspoons of kosher salt and cook for about 10 minutes. Begin adding the other vegetables gradually, starting with the peppers, carrots and squash. When all the vegetables are in the stew, add the thyme, cumin, salt and oregano. Let the vegetables simmer until tender as a stock begins to form. Mix in the lentils and kidney beans. Simmer for as long as you have time for, up to an hour and a half.
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Farm Fresh Corn Chowder Base
Makes 3 1/2 quarts
12 ears of corn, shucked and rinsed
3 quarts water
1 tablespoon Kosher Salt
1 cup low fat (1%) milk
Bring water to boil in a 5-quart soup pot. Add corn whole and blanch for 4-6 minutes. Remove corn from pot (leaving the water which is the beginning of your corn stock). After cooling slightly, remove the kernels from the cob with a sharp knife. Reserve two pieces of corn for later and place kernels back into the cooking liquid with the cobs. Add 1 tablespoon Kosher salt to soup and cook for another 45 minutes on a medium-low heat. At this point you can let the mixture sit for a while to allow the flavors to absorb.
Discard the cobs and begin blending the corn mixture using a hand blender. You next want to separate the corn mixture from the liquid by pouring it through a mesh sieve and save the corn pulp in a blender. When all of the mixture has been separated, blend the corn with 1 cup milk until it forms a smooth consistency. Add this mixture back to the stock and you have the base for your chowder. Either freeze or begin making the corn chowder.
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Dear Friends,
We've been enjoying our weekend visits to the local farmers' markets and weekly pick- ups at our CSAs, while also marveling at the vegetables maturing in our own gardens. It's this time of year when fresh fruits and vegetables are so abundant, that sometimes we almost have too much. As our refrigerators become stuffed with all that's fresh and local, we grow more and more dependent on cooking with our friends. We hope this issue will inspire you and your friends to get creative with all this brilliant food.
Alison and Shannon
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Creative Cooking
Sometimes, the best way to use farm fresh produce is to have no specific plan in mind. Improvisational cooking will give you and your friend flexibility in preparing your dishes. For this kind of cooking date to work best, we suggest getting together weekly on a set day. (For us, it's the day after our CSA pick-ups.) Then, alternate which kitchen you cook in, load your bags with fresh produce and herbs and set out to a friend's house -- with no certain recipe in mind. We think stews, salads and soups, where the herbs and vegetables can easily be varied and combined to make distinctive dishes, are the ideal meals to improvise. In fact, our recipe for Farm Fresh Ratatouille (see left), a marvelous combination of farm fresh foods, was developed in just this way. Feel free to use the recipe as merely a guide and vary the vegetables and flavor.
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Farm Fresh Food Swap
Gather a group of friends and have a Farm Fresh Food Swap. It's an innovative way to garner a varied number of summer meals, as well as fill your pantries and freezers with food that has been preserved. There are several types of food swaps that would work well.
Preserving the Harvest - This swap focuses on blanching fruits and vegetables in big batches to freeze for the months ahead. Peppers, corn, zucchini and berries are ideal. Each team of friends would select a fruit or vegetable and prepare large quantities together. The friends would then gather to swap food at a later date.
Summer Sauce Swap - Think pesto, red pepper puree and tomato sauce. This swap is designed to use the freshest and most abundant ingredients - basil, tomatoes, eggplants, garlic - and will provide you with a variety of sauces for the freezer.
Canning Swap - You may have noticed that jarring and canning is back. Gather a group of friends who are interested in this tried-and-true method of preserving food, and host canning sessions. Salsas, jams and pickled vegetables are some of our favorite foods to preserve.
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Making Farm Fresh Corn Chowder
We love a sweet and creamy bowl of farm-fresh corn chowder. Of course, the real deal can take time and patience. For this reason, there couldn't be a more optimal food to prepare with a friend. We suggest an end-of-summer Corn Chowder Making session where you gather with a few friends to shuck, boil and blend together in large quantities. It's hard to imagine sitting down to Thanksgiving in mid-August, but this soup would make a rewarding first course.
As one of you husks the corn, the other can begin cooking the corn. You can work efficiently in teams removing the kernels from the cob. One friend can steady the mesh sieve as the other pours the liquid through, and while another blends, the other can begin sautéing the vegetables. The time spent in the kitchen catching up with each other's lives and finally, the end product -- delicious and fresh food to take home to your family for dinner -- will be well worth your effort.
Corn Chowder
Makes 5 quarts 2 tablespoons olive oil 2 large yellow onions, chopped 5 medium sized red potatoes, skin on, cut into cubes 1 red pepper, diced 1 teaspoon Kosher salt 1 tablespoon chopped fresh parsley (optional) 3 ½ quarts corn stock (see recipe left) In a large sauté pan, heat olive oil and sauté onions, potatoes and red pepper until they begin to brown (approximately 10 minutes). Season with salt. Add this mixture to the corn stock and cook for another 20-30 minutes. Sprinkle with chopped fresh parsley if desired. |
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Win a Copy of Julia & Julia, by Julia Powell, from Cooking With Friends |
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Be the first person to forward our August newsletter to 10 friends and you'll receive a copy of Julia & Julia, by Julia Powell. This delightful memoire has been turned into a major motion picture starring Meryl Streep and Amy Adams and is in theatres this month. Simply press the "forward to a friend" button on the newsletter and be the first person to e-mail us to info@cookingwithfriendsclub.com.
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Tool-of-the-month:
Kuhn Rikon Corn Zipper
This month's time saving tool is the Kuhn Rikon Corn Zipper. This whimsical device removes corn kernels easily from the cob. It sells for $16.95.
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Alison Bermack and Shannon Henry
Visit our web site at www.cookingwithfriendsclub.com.
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