Flavors of the Season

Eating seasonally is amazing! But once you come home from the farmer's market and the U-pick apple orchard...what do you do with all that squash? Here are some of my favorite seasonal recipes. The vegetable recipes are my own modifications from "Practical Paleo" by Diane Sanfilippo and the easy apple crisp comes courtesy of Robert Irvine.

Apple Crisp

Just about any grocery store including the big box carry a little red cardboard box in the fruit section by the apples with "Apple Crisp" on the package. I bought a pack of this a few weeks ago and made it, and although it was delicious, I realized I had essentially paid $2 for a paper packet of a few spoonfuls of sugar. Buy it if you don't have the staples on hand and you just want to slice apples and go. Here's how to make it from scratch:

6 apples, peeled and sliced (choose your sugar content wisely, as the crumb topping will add extra sweetness. Crisp Galas are my favorite and I didn't find them to be too sweet in this, but if you like a tart contrast, choose Granny Smiths. In any case, choose an apple that has a crisp bite, not a soft apple like a Red or Golden Delicious, as they won't stand up to the heat of the baking)

6 tbl white sugar

1/3 c brown sugar

3/4 c flour

1 tsp cinnamon

6 tbl butter, cut into small pieces

Preheat oven to 400. Arrange sliced apples in baking dish. Cut dry ingredients into butter slices with 2 knives or use a pastry blender until a fine crumb forms. Sprinkle topping over sliced apples and bake for 30 minutes. 

I haven't made this with pears but I imagine a sturdy pear like a Bosc or an Anjou would hold up to the heat well, especially mixed with the apples. 

Roasted Carrots

Don't be tempted to use "baby" carrots for this recipe; they're usually carrots from the reject pile that have been shaved down to a miniature size, and typically too woody for cooking. Cut your carrots into as equal of a dimension as possible so that they cook evenly. 

8 large carrots, peeled, cut into 3" matchsticks (split into halves or quarters lengthwise if necessary)

2 tbl melted butter, coconut oil or bacon fat

salt and pepper to taste

Preheat oven to 375. Toss carrots with melted fat and season to taste. Roast for 20-30 minutes. 

Butternut Squash Soup

I hate peeling and chopping butternut squash and I especially hate going through all that work to find out that I haven't got enough squash to make a decent pot of soup. This is one of the few supermarket shortcuts I use--the pre-chopped butternut squash cubes, in clamshells in the produce department. Also, when a recipe calls for fresh herbs, I always buy a pot in the garden section at Whole Foods or Sprouts. Even at Home Depot 3" little herb pots run around $3 or less; in the grocery store clamshells a sprig of fresh herbs is $3.50. Even if I kill the plant in the pot I still spent less, and hopefully I managed to keep it alive at least til the next time I need that herb. 

1 Butternut squash OR 4 cups chopped butternut squash cubes (2 clamshells)

1 yellow onion (chopped)

2 granny smith apples,peeled, and made into matchsticks.

6 cloves garlic (crushed)

16 oz broth (I use vegetable but chicken and beef work just as well)

4 tbl coconut oil or bacon fat (melted, divided)

fresh sage

salt 

pepper

sriracha sauce (optional)

sour cream (optional)

bacon (optional)

Preheat oven to 400. Toss squash with 2 tbl fat and season with salt and pepper. Place on baking dish and roast for 40 minutes or until caramelized. Meanwhile, use a large heavy bottomed pot to saute onions in the rest of the bacon fat until translucent; add the garlic, 1 apple, 1 tsp of salt and 1 tsp of pepper and 6-8 fresh sage leaves. Cook for 2 minutes. Add broth. Once squash is cooked add squash to pot and stir. Allow to cool before putting through a blender in batches (do not fill to top as steam will cause to the top to fly off if the mixture expands too much). Garnish with the second granny smith apple matchsticks, and I like a couple dashes of sriracha, a dollop of sour cream, and a few crumbles of bacon on top. 

Brussels Sprouts with Bacon

The only way I like bacon these days is baked in the oven (350 at 30 minutes on a rack over a roasting pan to catch the drippings). Baked bacon is so melt-in-your-mouth good you won't want anything else and it will ruin you for restaurant fried bacon. It's worth making up a batch to keep in the refrigerator and drain the drippings to use in cooking, but if you don't have a batch of baked bacon on hand, you can cut the slices into 1/2" sections and cook them quickly in a skillet. 

4 cups brussels sprouts, halved, ends trimmed and tough outer leaves removed 

2 granny smith apples, peeled and cubed

2 tbl melted bacon fat, butter or coconut oil

sea salt

pepper

balsamic vinegar

8 slices of bacon, cooked

Preheat oven to 375. Toss the brussels sprouts and cubed apples with fat and season with salt and pepper. Roast for 20 minutes or until crispy and caramelized. Sprinkle with balsamic and crumbled bacon.

Fall Vegetable Garden Soup

Minestrone Alla Romagna (source: Essentials of Italian Cooking, Marcella Hagan)

1 lb fresh zucchini
1/2 c olive oil
3 tbl butter
1 cup thinly sliced onion
1 c diced carrots
1 c diced celery
2 cups peeled diced potatoes
1/4 lb fresh green beans
3 c. Shredded cabbage
1 and 1/2 c canned cannellini beans
6 cups meat broth
Optional: crust from 1-2 lb piece of parmigiano-reggiano cheese
2/3 c canned tomatoes with juice

1. Soak the zucchini in cold water for 20 minutes then rinse clean of grit. Trim on both ends and dice finely.
2. In a large stockpot add oil, butter, and onion and cook on medium low until onion is pale gold in color.
3. Add carrots and cook for 2-3 minutes. Then add celery and cook for 2-3 minutes, then add potatoes and do the same.
4. Snap off both ends of green beans and dice. Add to pot and cook for 2-3 minutes. Add zucchini and do the same. Add cabbage. Cook for 5-6 minutes.
5. Add broth, optional cheese, tomatoes and a sprinkle of salt. Cover pot lower heat and adjust to a steady gentle simmer.
6. Cook for 2.5 hours then add the cannellini beans, stir well and cook for 30 minutes more.
7. Remove the cheese crust, add grated cheese if desired, then taste and correct for salt.

Autumn in Heels--Eating Seasonally, Eating Locally

In Southern California we don't get much of an autumn so we really, I mean REALLY celebrate seasonal flavors like, ON THE FREAKING DOT of September 1st. And by celebrate seasonal flavors I mean go to Starbucks as early as they open so it'll be sort of cool enough to enjoy a hot drink and get a pumpkin spice latte. If you happen to be in luck and it's a slightly overcast day you will definitely wear your brisk Arctic polar fleece Northface zip-up jacket, because really, when are you going to have another chance to wear it and pretend we have seasons. By October the infinity scarves and Ugg boots make their appearance, probably with leggings and the thinnest long sleeved shirt you own, because, again, it's usually in the 80s all the way through the start of November.

The relentless wild Californian Infinity Scarf develops a symbiotic
relationship with its prey before ultimately devouring her.

We hear about this "Autumn" you other states talk about and it sounds awesome. A whole new wardrobe that you only use for those three months! Dressing to match the foliage of trees that somehow change their colors?! That sounds magical. In So-Cal we have cypress trees, palm trees, and lawns. When we go to pumpkin patches they typically are big parking lots that have been covered with stacked bales of hay and a bunch of straw on the ground (which crunches satisfyingly under your Ugg boots and makes you feel all Autumnal-ly) and carnival rides to disguise the fact that you're getting the very same pumpkins you could pick up at the big box grocery stores. They even come in the self-same packing boxes. It's hard for us to find authentic Autumn experiences in the land of eternal summer--so we turn to comfort foods and things flavored with cinnamon and squash. Our myriad local farm-to-table gastropubs will reinvent the butternut squash ravioli and fried squash blossoms and pumpkin cheesecake all over their seasonal menus this month. 

So yes, yes, a thousand times yes on the pumpkin spice latte (I like a nice pumpkin shot in a chai latte, myself). But truly eating seasonally, in a way that's a bit more meaningful than gingerbread cookies and butternut squash soup, is a little more time and thought consuming. 

I first read about the concept of only eating seasonal foods when I read the Barefoot Contessa's book Back to Basics: Fabulous Flavor from Simple Ingredients. In the preface, Ina Garten describes her impossibly glamorous foray to Paris and how difficult it was as an American, being completely used to having any ingredient under the sun eternally available, to come to terms with having to cook only with what was available. In particular, she relates her attempt to cook a traditional American Thanksgiving dinner, when she, Ina Garten of Martha's Vineyard, was used to having access to heirloom veg fed turkeys, seventeen different pumpkins of varying colors, and wild cranberries from what I imagine is her own William's-Sonoma-crafted cranberry bog--only to find out that those things are only sold frozen and in cans in France, if at all. (Because, apparently, not all Parisians enjoy eating the cuisine of English people who were making do with things they found in the woods.) Still, I appreciated her story of gradually giving in to the season and allowing her inspiration for dinner to come from what was fresh and available where she was,of learning to cook in a way that celebrated a vegetable or fruit that was at the height of its flavor. It made me think about the December bing cherries that appear in stores like a breath of summer, shiny and rosy-cheeked and whispering, "Now you can have it all, now you can really have it all..." I remember buying a big two and something pound bag for a whopping $24, trembling with anticipation and not even waiting to get to my car before popping one into my mouth, expecting to be met with a burst of sweet juice. Instead I was met by hard, joyless lies, which eventually gave way to the sour truth--there is nothing, NOTHING, worse than a December cherry. 

Why eat seasonally, when we have access to almost everything almost all the time? It's the pumpkin-spice-latte effect. Starbucks actually sells pumpkin syrup all year round. You can get pumpkin lattes literally. Any. Time. You could have a nice hot pumpkin latte and you could even get them to put a dash of cinnamon or toffee sprinkles on top in the middle of July. The fact that it's on the chalk-menu in burnt orange chalk-pen with curlicues of green like pumpkin vines around it reminds you that you haven't had one since last fall and now you NEED that pumpkin hit like an infinity scarf needs a white girl to go with it. 

If pumpkin syrup, containing zero real pumpkin and mostly made up of corn syrup, can be so good,  how amazing could fall fruits and vegetables, cooked well and at the height of their flavor, be? This table of local fall foods got me thinking about more than just pumpkin and butternut squashes. Broccoli and cauliflower are at their sweetest and least bitter in the fall; roasted carrots (cut into matchsticks, toss with melted butter, salt and pepper, cook at 375 for 30 minutes. Seriously. Stop boiling...); brussells sprouts (Salt & Cleaver in Hillcrest, San Diego has possibly THE most amazing caramelized Brussels Sprouts with bacon, balsamic vinegar, and granny smith apples); grapes (vineyards are one of the only spots for seasonal color for us in California), pears and of course apples. All these things have become mostly season-less in American grocery stores but their flavor is absolutely amazing right now. 

Eating locally goes hand in hand with eating seasonally, and here's the thing. It's very haute to eat locally and visit the farmer's markets (in San Diego, there's a farmer's market or three on every day of the week) during the summer. Nothing, and I mean nothing, can compete with the flavor of a farm stand summer strawberry. The grocery store strawberry has just had to sacrifice too much flavor in favor of the sturdiness that lets them be shipped all over the country; its a cheap truck stop cousin to the ultra sweet, delicate strawberry you can grow in your own backyard. The farm-stand strawberry is the next best thing, and at almost the same price per pound as the monstrous, tasteless version you get at the grocery store, it's ridiculous not to get the farmer's market version. Buying farm-stand strawberries keeps that strain of strawberry alive, because in case you haven't noticed, you literally cannot buy a strawberry that sweet in a plastic clamshell at a big box grocery store. They are selling (and their suppliers are growing) an entirely different product, something you almost can't, really, call a strawberry anymore because its resemblance to a real, hot from the summer sun, strawberry is so remote. Limp, tasteless, and sometimes moldy? (I'm looking at you Vons. I AM LOOKING AT YOU.) or sweet, acidic, and complex? Hurrah for biodiversity!

Except even in California the strawberry goes out of season. The guys at the farmer's market that were selling me corn and summer squash now have kohlrabi and artichokes and brussells sprouts. The orchard people don't have cherries anymore, they have figs and pluots and pears. And while figs may not be as sexy as cherries, they're still sweet and sultry and delicious--and buying that fig from a local farmer keeps them in business till cherry and strawberry season rolls around again. 

This morning I decided to drive out to Julian, the little orchard town in the mountains northeast of San Diego proper. My visit just happened to coincide with the start of the fall u-pick season (labor day weekend) and Apple-Starr Orchards had trees dripping with Bosc, Comice, and Anjou pears before you could even get out to the gala and granny smith apple orchards. I've been to several different "pumpkin patches" all over San Diego and the neighboring areas but most are not true working farms, just patches of land where someone parked a tractor for photo ops and pumpkins laid out in a row not far from the cardboard shipping crates. These orchards were true orchards, with, yes, imperfect fruit, weirdly shaped fruit, some worm and bird damage, some bruises--but these trees also held the sweetest, most bursting-with-flavor pears and crunchy apples I'd ever tasted. We munched as we picked, developing an eye for what colors each kind of apple and pear meant the ripest, sweetest fruit, using a long-handled claw-basket pole to reach the delectable fruits at the top of the tallest branches. Without a bit of cinnamon or sugar these fruits were perfectly, fantastically Autumn. 

Laden down with "peck" bags (12 pounds) we headed into town to Julian Hard Cider, a local brewery that makes cold-press cider with only local apples, champagne yeast from local grapes and seasonal ingredients. Since it was so early in the fall we were lucky enough to find their Black-and-Blue, a blueberry and blackberry hard apple cider, and my favorite, Cherry Bomb, an absolutely explosive cherry and apple hard cider; but they also had Apple Pie and Harvest Apple, rich with cinnamon and nutmeg and all the things we love about fall. The tasting room is small, with a bar made of wood and corrugated steel from local reclaimed barns and chandeliers made from cut-glass cider bottles, and for $1 a taste we sampled everything they had in stock, finishing our hot apple picking September afternoon in a haze of Apple Pie and Razzmatazz Hard Ciders while downing carnitas from the farm stand next door.

Celebrating seasonal flavors, check. I might even have room for some kohlrabi, depending on what that turns out to actually be--after a quick pumpkin chai latte.