Some Like It Hot...Very Hot...

It's a record-breaking day for heat here in the mid-Atlantic, so I have not turned on the oven or stove at all.

What am I eating? Well, I'm lucky enough to be pulling in some gorgeous produce from my CSA that requires virtually no treatment at all to be delicious!

I'm eating some gorgeous peaches, fresh from the trees earlier in the week. These peaches are so succulent and sweet that they need NOTHING added to them. I shared some of last week's peaches with my sister-in-law and she asked what I'd put on them...the answer was nothing. If possible, this week's are even better. Perhaps it's the heat making them so delicious to me, but they're fabulous.

I've also been eating cucumbers. I had two - this week's and last week's - and sliced them into half-moons and prepared them a la David Tanis. His Vietnamese cucumbers (here's a newspaper's publication of a version of the recipe - I don't want to come afoul of copyright law) are right up my alley, and the heat of the chiles combined with the cool cucumbers seems all too perfect on a hot day like today.

I may cut into a block of cheese later, but maybe not. At this rate, I'll end the day having only eaten cucumbers and peaches, and that's perfectly fine with me.

CSA Summer

This week, my camera battery died, and it was such a busy week I've just gotten a new one. So while I do not have pics of all the wonderful produce from this week, I have wonderful produce all the same.

This week we got more garlic, a beautiful and vibrant yellow zucchini, some lovely broccoli (if all broccoli were like this, I think I'd love broccoli!), more tomatoes and cucumbers, potatoes, arugula, a new green called Tokyo Bekana, and more Thai and Italian basil.

I also got my weekly egg share, and this week for fruit I got about a dozen beautiful and fragrant peaches. Again, they were so soft and tender they filled the car with the smell of nectar on the drive. Mmm....

Thank You, David Tanis

In my most recent CSA bounty, I got a beautiful cucumber. It’s still early for tomatoes, and thus my favorite use for those two bits of produce, gazpacho (I’m sure it’ll come soon enough!). Thus I went hunting through my cookbooks and cooking magazines (of which I am not lacking) for a good recipe using a cucumber. Sure, I could slice it and eat raw, or make cucumber water, but I wanted something different.

In paging through one of my more beautiful cookbooks, A Platter of Figs and Other Recipes, byDavid Tanis, I found a recipe for salmon with Vietnamese cucumbers. I was hooked, and had to try it. This book is gorgeous, but I also love it in concept, too. Tanis’ thesis is that the best meals are those that feature fresh, fabulous ingredients. With a past at Chez Panisse (which is on my list of must-eat-there-someday restaurants), Tanis has a knack for celebrating the best in food. If the ingredients are good, the preparation does not need to be elaborate to highlight the flavors.

Knowing a bit of his basic philosophy, I was excited to see if this was as simply and tasty as I hoped. I sliced the cucumbers into the half moons and mixed them with the dressing ingredients, which included (among other things) some chili pepper, ginger and fish sauce, then stuck the bowl in the fridge to marinate and meld. This took about 15 minutes, total, and I was not hurrying.

The next day, I pulled the cucumbers and a wild salmon filet (I always ask the fishmonger to skin it for me before it gets wrapped up – convenience!) out of the fridge. I decided to cook up some quinoa, which is a high-protein grain that cooks quickly, too. I cooked it only in water, knowing the cucumber liquid would season the entire plate. Then I quickly pan sautéed the salmon filet.

Not only was the plate beautiful, but it was delicious. The rich fish was nicely balanced by the tang and spice of the cucumbers. The quinoa acted as the perfect base, adding texture and serving as a vessel for the flavors. Though I had cucumbers left over after serving myself, I went back and ate them all. I can’t wait to make more of these cucumbers!

Mise en Place

It’s been so hot around here, I’m not even hungry every night. On days where I have a very late lunch, cooking doesn't always appeal. However, looking ahead to a busy few nights, I know I should at least make a few things…easier on myself for later in the week.

It’s a perfect time to chop, slice and process a few things…no cooking required!

My first stop – slicing up some veggies for use later in the week. I do not do this will ALL veggies, but some are just fine. In this instance, I took a few hot peppers and some garlic and sliced them, then chopped a few slices as well. This can be the basis of a dressing, or a spicy Thai-style dish, or generally anything I want to be spicy and pungent. If tomatoes magically appear in my world any time soon, this could go in my gazpacho too!

Next up, I had some lovely Italian basil, and some sprigs of Thai basil as well. While I can use Thai basil in those spicy dishes I mention, above, the Italian basil is begging to be made into pesto – especially since I finally found some pine nuts! I put the basil in the cuisinart mini-prep with some parmesan, some salt and freshly ground pepper, and some toasted pine nuts. This time, I toasted them in a skillet on the stovetop, but you can also toast them in the microwave too – they key, using either method, is to monitor them carefully to ensure they don’t burn.

After a few pulses of the cuisinart, I added a few glugs (yes, that’s a technical term) of olive oil, and whirred it again. I scraped it a few times, tasted, adjusted with salt and pepper, and added an additional dollop of oil. Voila…pesto!

I put it in a pyrex container with an airtight lid, topped with a little extra oil to maintain the freshness, and it’s in the fridge, waiting for use.

The last little adventure in not cooking was cucumber…in preparation for the next night’s dinner.

Vegetable Parade

Last Wednesday evening, I was supposed to be three different places at 5:30, one of which was picking up my vegetables. I wasn’t going to skip that. On my way to pick up my CSA vegetables, I must have been distracted by the other places I should be…I’ll also blame the intense heat for my absent-mindedness. I didn’t go the usual way to the pick-up point, and instead headed directly home from work. Knowing enough about the area that I could get there, even if in a round-about way, I headed up the highway. When I got there, I realized that way, while less scenic, was much quicker…apparently my brain was working at a higher level than I realized!

The haul for the sixth week of my CSA engagement presented the first real bag chock full of vegetables. I came home with small potatoes, more eggplant, some delicious garlic, additional Italian basil, a cucumber, a yellow squash and a zucchini! I can’t wait to get to eating these. They smell marvelous and, being so fresh and yummy, require little effort to be delicious.