June 2009 Archives

The first fruits of summer have arrived. They're easy to freeze, but only if you can stop yourself from eating them first.

Active time: one hour to pick about 5 pounds; 28 minutes to process.

I had two hours to spare the other night, and I immediately thought of the berries.

We'd had about 36 hours of warm, clear weather after a week or so of rain and clouds, and I knew the strawberries would finally be sweetening up in the fields at Way Fruit Farm in Port Matilda, Pennsylvania. It's about a 30-minute drive one way, and I found myself calculating how many berries I could pick in the hour that was left. Strawberry season makes me just a touch crazy.

It always has. When I was a kid, we'd go pick on a Saturday morning, and by that afternoon my fingers were pink from their juices and my mother would be wondering if we'd have enough left make jam.

These days I still dig into the big container full of warm berries before we even get out of the parking lot of the farm stand, but I'm a little more reserved, knowing I need about two or three gallons of whole frozen berries for our winter pancakes and smoothies and more if I'm making jam that year. But there's not much that can beat these first fresh fruits of summer, so the day they arrive at the farmer's market, we celebrate with a strawberry shortcake dinner, and later we don't let the several week-long season slip by without a strawberry pie. In between we're eating them sliced over cereal, as a snack in our lunchboxes, and with a dollop of whipped cream for dessert. A day in June without a berry doesn't make much sense to me.

The process

Strawberries are easy to freeze. Simply wash them and take off their green caps before laying them out on a parchment paper-lined cookie sheet to freeze. This first step will keep them separate when you then pack the frozen berries into gallon zipper bags, and all winter you can dip into the bag for just what you need.

It takes about four or five pounds of berries to fill a one-gallon bag, so plan accordingly if you head out to a farm to pick. But the red jewels are also readily available for another week or so - in the central Pennsylvania area at least - at any farmer's market. A word of advice: don't go overboard, buying so many you go strawberry crazy like me. There are, after all, more fruits to come - it's just so hard to remember when these first berries of the season arrive.

Just a week or so left to put up English peas for winter, even if you think you don't like them. 

Active time: Two hours to shell, with the help of friends; 24 minutes to process. 

My brother and I grew up thinking we hated peas. Our mother - the primary, and oh-so-talented, cook in my childhood household - has them on a short list of foods she doesn't like and, therefore, didn't make them. So our experience with peas involved those bitter, overdone green bits in Campbell's soup. Or the overcooked vegetable of the day offered as part of our school lunches.

So let me qualify that - I hate well done, mushy peas that are all bitter starch. But the shell peas that are making their appearance at my local farmer's market right now are sweet and snappy, and - if just blanched quickly in some boiling water - offer some resistance when you bite into them. Those peas - I love those peas.

My brother's still a skeptic, but I'm a head-over-heals-in-love convert now. So with a vacation looming that would have us returning after a heat wave finished off the tender pea plants, I set out on Saturday for the market on a mission. The pouring rain soaked me and my dog, Ellie - a regular at the market as well - but it didn't matter. That half-bushel of peas we came home with is what mattered.

Only one farmer at the Bellefonte, Pennsylvania, Saturday market grows English shell peas in that kind of volume, and Mark Ardry of Ardry Farm in Howard knows he can count on me to buy at least that many during the fleeting weeks in June while he has them.

I lugged them home - uphill - and quickly shelled a couple of cups of the green pearls for dinner. That evening, with steamed scallops and peas dressed in a lemony vinaigrette perched on my lap, a glass of sauvignon blanc at my side, and a cool breeze blowing across my porch, I was in early summer heaven.

Then my husband and I settled into the real work.

The process

Confession time. Peas are delicious, but if you're going to put up that many for winter eating, they're also time consuming and not something you want to tackle yourself.

Prying them out of their green cocoons is not hard, but it's a two-step process. Snap off the stem end, pulling it down along the length of the pod to pull out the string. Then, using your thumbnail, split the pod down the middle and use your thumb to gently pull the peas out, and let them fall to a bowl in your lap.

We were working away when some neighbors showed up asked us to join them on their porch for a chat. "Can I bring my peas?" I asked.

We carried bowls and baskets a few doors down, and there - luckily for my 

husband and I - found a few willing recruits who thought they'd give shelling peas a whirl. They were naturals, and through laughter and drinks, made short work the job.

To freeze them, they need blanched - quickly, about a minute and a half - in boiling water and then, just like the spinach, plunged into ice water to stop the cooking and set the color. Let them chill out for a minute or two - the general rule of thumb for the ice bath is to let the food soak for as long as you blanched it - and then drain them in a colander. And, as with anything else, pack them into zipper bags, suction the air out, and freeze them for winter side dishes, pot pies, soups and pasta dishes.

With a quick blanch like that, they'll come out of winter hibernation still sweet and with a little chew. Certainly not the peas of my childhood. Good enough, I bet, to convert even the rest of my family. 

I usually don't start making pesto until the basil reaches its shrub-sized state in July or August. But my CSA has been pinching off the 6,000 basil plants in its greenhouses to promote their growth, and we members have been the lucky beneficiaries of the resulting bags of the little, four-leaved tops.

I've been stirring them into pasta dishes, and using them in place of lettuce on sandwiches, but after yesterday's pick-up, I thought I had enough of them to make pesto. It seems fitting that this week, when we'll welcome summer officially, I'm making the first batch of the season's perfect sauce.

Pesto can become a fine accompaniment to sliced tomatoes in August, a bright dressing for hot pasta or, slathered on a chewy piece of good bread, a great snack. And here's the bonus: it freezes beautifully, so there's no reason to mourn its loss after the fall frosts turn the basil plants black. I put up a couple quarts of it in the summer - individually frozen in one-cup containers - to enjoy all winter.

The process

My pesto recipe is a compilation of many I've tried over the years. The result is more paste than sauce, as I like it to be thick enough for spreading on bread and tomato slices, and I can always thin it down with more olive oil - or, to reduce calories, with a little pasta water - if I want it in a more sauce-like consistency for pasta.

I eschew traditional pine nuts in favor of walnuts or almonds, as I like to keep things as local as I can - look at a bag of pine nuts the next time you're in the grocery store and you'll probably find they were grown in China. Walnuts and almonds at least come from California, and if I'm lucky enough to have sustainably grown pecans from a relative of one of my CSA's employees, it's a red-letter day. Or a green one - if they wind up in the pesto.   

Other modifications you'll find in my pesto: my husband's newly diagnosed lactose intolerance has led me to experiment with various sheep and goat cheeses, as he can digest them better than cow's milk cheeses. I found that pecorino, a dry, aged sheep's milk cheese makes a nice stand-in for the more traditional Parmesan cheese, although its salty nature it caused me to cut back on the additional salt in the recipe. (I suggest starting with a good pinch of salt and adding more as needed.) And while I don't normally substitute the garlic cloves, my garlic supply from last summer has recently given out, and I haven't pulled any new bulbs yet. Happily, yesterday's share box also had a few garlic scapes in them - they're the long, curled green whips in the picture above. They'd become the flower of the garlic plants, and growers cut them as they shoot out of center of the plant in June, to allow the plants to continue putting their energy into the bulbs below ground. Scapes have a mild garlicky flavor, and they work nicely for stir-fries and soups. Today, they stood in for garlic cloves in my pesto - it's just one example of how eating locally and seasonally forces you to be inventive at times.  It can be challenging, but it can also make you a more creative cook - and in this morning's case, led to some delicious pesto. Now, if we could just hurry up those tomatoes. 

Active time: 9 minutes

Pesto ingredients ready for oil. 

In the Zeigler household of my childhood, Christmas dinner was not complete without this spinach dish. Rich with butter and cheese and held together by eggs and breadcrumbs, the recipe is made for holidays, and it converts easily from a casserole to a quiche filling to a bite-sized hot appetizer.

There was just one problem: Mom, not a fan of cooked greens, wouldn't eat it. My father and I loved it. At the slightest hint that Mom was considering a menu revamp that might eliminate "spinach," as we simply referred to it, my father and I would howl in protest. We usually won out.

So now, with a holiday table of my own to fill, I usually set one to which Popeye would be happy to be invited. But that means I need a lot of spinach come December - which is not a great month for spinach growth in my area. 

So in June, I put up as much as I can from the row of it growing in my garden. This year's cool temperatures and damp days have made for some great conditions for all the greens in the garden, so I'm getting a regular supply from both there and my CSA.

After we've had our fill of spinach salads with bacon dressing, the extras get blanched and frozen for winter soufflés, omelets, pasta dishes - and that all-important December meal.

The process

For a ten-ounce bag of frozen spinach - the usual size of a box from the frozen foods section of the grocery store - start with between eleven and twelve ounces of fresh spinach, as some of the water will steam out of the leaves as they blanch.

Wash the leaves and trim off the stems as a large pot of water comes up to a boil - use one with a steamer insert if you have it. Prepare a bowl of ice water in your sink as well - you'll need it ready as soon as the greens come out of their steam bath. 

Place the spinach in the steamer basket or a colander that will fit down in your pot, and plunge the insert into the boiling water. Pop the lid on and set your timer for two minutes. Spread out some clean, cotton kitchen towels on your counter while the spinach blanches.

At the end of two minutes, take the insert out of the boiling water, and dunk it into the ice water bath for a minute or two. This will stop the greens from overcooking and preserve their emerald green color in the freezer. When they're cool, press the excess water out of the greens, and turn them out on the towels to finish draining.

Pack them in into zipper bags and freeze - my favorite tool of the season is my handheld, battery-operated vacuum sealer from Reynolds and its corresponding freezer bags that are both reusable and can be easily resealed if you get in them to get just a handful of berries out for a smoothie at breakfast. (More on that later in the week - strawberry season is finally here!)

This method works for any cooking green - I regularly put up both piquant arugula and the blander Swiss chard, which often stands in when the spinach supply is exhausted. My holiday guests usually can't tell the difference.

Active time: 42 minutes, including the time it takes to boil water.