cucumber salad, a clean kitchen, and homemade vanilla

When I whipped up this salad for a last-minute dinner the other night and brought it to the table, it conjured up memories of our grandmothers and the farm for both Ryan and I. Cucumbers, tomatoes, and onions reign in Texas's summer gardens, and neither of us had any shortage of this sweet, tangy, refreshing salad growing up. My mom's version of this salad always said, "Summer is here." And this summer, it feels like it's here to stay.

The cucumbers and onions from my mom's garden and the tomatoes from our own made for a spectacularly crunchy and fresh side dish. The salad is laced with white vinegar, sugar, salt, and pepper, and tastes even better after a day in the fridge.

But I've written before about my personal connection to this simple summer salad... So without further ado, here's the quick recipe.

Cucumber and Tomato Farm Salad

1 large cucumber, thinly sliced on a mandoline or chopped into 1/2-inch chunks
1 cup fresh tomatoes, chopped if desired
1 small onion, thinly sliced on a mandoline
3/4 cup white vinegar
1/2 tbls sugar
salt and pepper to taste

Mix it all together and let sit in the fridge for at least half an hour or overnight. Enjoy!


In other news, I came home after my 4-mile trail run with the triathlon training class to the most beautiful site. Ryan, instead of calling me to complain about the state in which I'd left the kitchen (unforgiveably messy), had cleaned the kitchen from countertop to countertop. I mean, the guy put away every last thing, including the coffeemaker (it's been too hot for coffee), the dish rack (this hand-washing then sit-till-its-dry thing is not helping us), the smelly red bin I had collecting dirty dishes in all their funky glory in the sink, and even the sugar bins (which aren't getting much use on account of us not drinking coffee).

It's amazing. I thought I couldn't let go of things, but let me tell you something: It's freeing to have clean counters. And last night when I made dinner, it was surprisingly easy to snap it back into shape once we had dined. Now I have a goal to meet when I cook--keep it as clean as Ryan was able to get it. Do you know how difficult it is for me to publicly admit that he cleaned the kitchen better than me?

And finally, this morning I bought 25 organic vanilla beans on eBay for just $22! Free shipping! And guess what I'll be using those for? Homemade vanilla extract. Yeah, you read that right.

All it took was one Tweet from Christopher Kimball: 140 characters of inspiration and here I am ordering vanilla beans online. He wrote: Homemade Vanilla: Split 1 fresh bean lengthwise; scrape; place all in 1 cup jar. Add 3/4 cup hot vodka. Seal; shake daily for week; store.

And then, in my print version of Cook's Illustrated last night, I read that testers found the homemade vanilla markedly better in recipes. And it's cheaper, to boot! A 7-ounce bottle of organic vanilla at Whole Foods runs $25. I can make 25 recipes of homemade organic vanilla for about the same amount (we drink cheap vodka).

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the gumbo success

I taunted you with that whole "live blogging" thing, didn't I? And then to wait a few days to even mention it again... It's just cruel. And I apologize.

So I'm here to make it up to you, recipe in tow, and to tell you that it turned out almost just like my mother's rendition of okra gumbo. Armed with the fond memory of summer dinner at home, a pound of fresh okra from mom's garden, and a recipe by Mark Bittman, I got to work in the kitchen on Sunday night.

I decided to prepare a vegetarian dish with a roux base, and it went a little something like this:

5 tbls butter
3 small onions, thickly sliced
2 1/2 cups chopped okra
21 oz (1 1/2 cans) organic whole peeled tomatoes, or a pound of fresh peeled tomatoes
1/4 cup flour
2 cloves chopped garlic
1 cup water
salt and pepper to taste
tabasco sauce to taste
3 cups cooked rice

In a large pot (I used the Dutch oven, surprise, surprise), begin by softening the onions for just a few minutes. Once they're soft, remove them from the pot and set aside. Add in the rest of the butter and the flour, stirring over medium heat to create a roux. If it cooks too quickly, simply turn down the heat. You'll want the roux to reach a nice Mississippi-mud color. Once you've got it, put the onions back in the pot and add the okra. Cook for a few minutes before adding the garlic, tomatoes, and water. Season with salt, pepper, and tabasco to taste. Let this cook down until the okra is tender, about 30 minutes.

Serve with white rice and plenty of hot sauce!

This made about four meal-sized servings; we had it for dinner on Sunday, and I made two lunches out of it this week. And each bite took me straight back to summers spent growing up on the farm...

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live blogging fresh okra gumbo

This cannot wait. On the stove, at this very minute, is a simmering pot of roux, okra (picked yesterday from my mom's garden), organic tomatoes--hold that thought, I've gotta go stir--farm onions, and garlic.

It is the very incarnation of what I grew up calling gumbo; Ryan just said, "I've never had a gumbo with tomato sauce in it." His version of gumbo looks like Mississippi mud and offers bits of crawdads and shrimp in every bite. My version of gumbo--the stuff my mom ladeled into our bowls on the summer dinner table without restraint--is chock-full of veggies and, to me, tastes like heaven.

It's still simmering. I'll fill you in very, very soon.

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zukes or cukes?

I was way ahead of the game on this one, folks. Way ahead of the game.

Waking up early on Saturday lent itself to reading a few cookbook pages and food blogs, which gave me the craving for cool Vietnamese noodle salad, which then inspired me to wake Ryan from his peaceful slumber and accompany me to the Farmers' Market. (Best girlfriend ever, right?) Though I felt like I was cheating on my mother, I bought carrots, cucumbers, peaches, red chiles, watermelon, mushrooms, spring onions, and smoky jalapeno and cilantro goat cheese. What a bounty!

After a quick stop at 'ho Foods for rice noodles and soy sauce, it was back to the casa for salad. Here's where things got crazy: I had the brilliant idea to prep all the food at once for the salad, some spring rolls, zucchini bread, and carrot cake. Since I could use all the veggies for each of the meals, it made sense.

And it continued to make sense as I got our salad together (fried tofu = fail; no comment except that I'll try it again someday)....

And the next night as I whipped up some spring rolls....


And it almost made sense this evening when I was ready to make my sister a batch of zucchini bread, until...

Well, crap. Which is which? Taste them, right? I did. They taste the same. There's not enough green skin left to tell which one's which, either. And they smell like watermelon (thanks, fridge!).

I can't rightly make a loaf of zucchini bread with cucumbers, now can I? While it's ok that I likely made my noodle salad and spring rolls with zucchini rather than cucumber...it's not ok to sub the C for the Z in a sweet baked good. And now, of course, I'm wondering if what I really had was just a couple of funny-shaped cucumbers... And no zucchini at all.

What's a gal to do!?

One thing's for sure... The carrots will make it into some sort of baked good a-s-a-p. In lieu of zucchini, there will be carrot something-or-other. Perhaps it'll involve the leftover pineapple I have in the fridge. Ideas?

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rustic peach tart

As promised, I tested a new pie crust recipe over the weekend. Following the advice of you wonderful readers (both of you), I tried an all-butter crust. The result? I super-flaky and flavorful crust that was a near-perfect base for a simple peach tart.

Last week I ordered Ratio and got straight to baking from it. While I'm not convinced that this is the end-all, be-all of cookbooks (that is, however, how I feel about Bittman's How To Cook Everything, but you already knew that), the idea of cooking by ratios is, in theory, a great one. 

So I followed Ruhlman's advice and went for a 3-2-1 pie crust (three parts flour, two parts fat--butter in this case--and one part water). To make it flakier, after gently forming the dough into a ball, wrapping it in plastic wrap, and chilling it for 30 minutes, I shaped it into a rectangle. I rolled the rectangle out just a little bit, folded it in thirds, and repeated that step about three times. Not only did this make the dough flakier by creating layers upon layers of butter and flour....It also made the edges of the crust cleaner! Remarkable!

Then, I rolled it into a round shape, transferred it to the foil-lined baking sheet, and added a simple filling (peeled, chopped peaches, an indeterminate amount of sugar, juice from one lime, and a tablespoon of flour). For the rustic tart look, I simply pulled the edges up over the filling. It baked at 350 for almost 45 minutes; we thought it was taking too long, so I cranked the heat up to 400 and took it out about 10 minutes later. 

I'd post a real recipe here, but I'm still perfecting the pie. It was delicious, but...What I did learn? Butter crust packs a punch--but a couple of my testers uttered things like, "Whoa--it's very buttery." So maybe I will cut down just a tad on the butter next time. As for the peaches, folks suggested adding cinnamon, which I had intentionally left out to let the flavor of the farmers' market peaches shine. 

Overall, a success. But it's not church pie contest material just yet.

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the truth about apple pie

Folks, I've told you before that I make a pretty mean apple pie. But in the last year, I think I've been taking one very, very bad shortcut: I've been taking the pie out of the oven way too soon. 

For Father's Day (yes, I'm aware that was almost a month ago...), I made my dad an apple pie, as is tradition, and it wasn't quite up to par. All the flavors were there, but--and this is a BIG but--the apples were a little on the crunchy side. 

And let me impart something to all you fine folks out there: that is NOT how you want the apples to be for a supposedly fantastic pie. 

I'm planning on entering our church's pie contest in early August, so I have some time to perfect my recipe. Normally, my crust recipe goes like this:

(Makes 2 crusts)
approx. 1 3/4 cup flour
1 cup shortening 
pinch of salt
1/3 cup milk
1 tbls apple cider vinegar (in a pinch, white vinegar works too)

Cut together flour and shortening with two knives or a potato masher. You want the shortening to be in pea-sized bits, as this will make the crust flaky.  Mix milk and vinegar, and pour into flour mixture, gently folding in with a fork. Add more milk as needed to wet all the dough. Roll out to about 1/8", using plenty of flour to keep it from sticking. To transfer the crust to your pie dish, place the rolling pin at one end, and gently roll the crust over the pin. Move it over the dish, and unroll. 

(For a glazed top, baste with one egg. If you don't have a basting brush, fold a paper towel like a fan and use one end to dip in the egg and paint it on. Cut slits in the top. You can use the extra dough to make designs on the top.)

Just for kicks, though, I'm planning on trying a different recipe tested by the fine folks at America's Test Kitchen over the weekend, and working on my baking times to perfect my not-so-perfect apple pie. 

Does anyone have some good pie tips they'd like to share? I am totally open for (and asking for) hints, tips, tricks, and answers. :)

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happiness is a KitchenAid mixer

After three weeks of feeling under the weather, I am happy to report that I am back. And last night's little stint in the kitchen (a loaf of pizza-dough-like bread and a pasta dish from our garden that you'll hear about soon enough) got me ready to tackle a slew of new recipes I've been chomping at the bit to try. Coupled with the fact that my tastebuds are functioning again, I'm ready to rev up the burners.

Tonight I'm planning on a home version of pizza with jalapenos and pineapple, along with a batch of zucchini bread and possibly some treats for Fin. And here is a short list of other fanciful creations I hope to be making in my kitchen very, very soon....

Chocolate sherbet, a la David Liebowitz
Lasagna tart, a la 101 Cookbooks
Pizza dough, also found at 101 Cookbooks

Not to mention, I just got my copy of Ratio by Michael Ruhlman and can't wait to learn those tricks of the trade. (Pate a choux, anyone?) Though, flipping through it, I see many French culinary terms that I don't yet recognize. (Pate a choux, anyone?) Perhaps I'll be purchasing Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking soon and tackling life Julie & Julia style...

The point is--and I know some of you out there have been wondering--I'm back on my feet and back in the kitchen, and I couldn't be happier about it!

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fig jam: it's delicious.

My first foray into fig preserves turned out to be a success; last night, some impromptu biscuits (glorious in their own right) were topped with spoonfuls of golden fig preserves. 

The preserves are sweet and have a lovely texture. They're just the right consistency, if I do say so myself. I think the frozen plate test does the trick. (I learned it here--thanks, Kristina!)

The biscuits started out as two-ingredient biscuits, until I decided to consult Mark Bittman and found a similar....but different...recipe to follow. 

A Riff on Mark Bittman's Quick Drop Biscuits

2 cups AP flour

scant 1 tsp salt

3 tsp baking powder

1 tsp baking soda

4 tbls cold butter, cut into cubes

1 cup nonfat plain yogurt, plus two tbls 1% milk

Preheat the oven to 450 (or ready a toaster oven) and butter/flour/grease a 9" round cake pan. Mix the dry ingredients with a whisk and cut in butter with a pastry cutter. Blend until butter is incorporated in smaller-than-pea-sized bits. (How's that for accurate?) Add the yogurt and mix. If batter is still bone-dry in parts, add milk and stir. Batter should be very shaggy. Drop in large spoonfuls into the cake pan (these can be messy!). Bake for 10-15 minutes, or until biscuits are golden-brown and cooked through. 

Enjoy HOT, with a spoonful of fresh preserves on top!

Ryan was hesitant to try these--but one bite in, he was hooked too. These are buttery. And moist. And fluffy. And just downright delicious. We almost devoured the entire pan, but had the self-restraint to save a few for breakfast. 

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from the tree to the jar: fig preserves

I'll come clean with you. 

I went a little crazy this weekend, but I had to. You see, fruits and vegetables wait for no one--not the sick, not the busy, not those trying to enjoy a holiday weekend. So even though I'm on (hopefully) the tail end of the worst summer cold in my memory and have been taking every OTC medication on top of antibiotics that the pharmacist told me I can handle, not to mention about eight Neti pot adventures daily.... I decided that my plans for the long weekend--to harvest and can and pickle produce from my mother's garden--had to go forward. 

Friday morning I made it out early to my mom's house, and after an hour or so of catching up, we went out to harvest figs. My mom stood on the ground to grab the ones within reach, and I climbed up the ladder. Once we started, it was hard to stop; there were beautiful, perfectly ripe figs at every turn, hiding under every leaf. In all, we picked about seven pounds; she had four in the fridge from the day before for a grand total of ELEVEN pounds of fresh figs. And that was just the beginning. 

The tree in the East Garden is so big that it's got enough for everyone: the birds enjoy their fill from the top of the tree, fifteen feet in the air and unreachable even with our tallest ladder, and we pick more than enough just from the bottom canopy. 

In all, I packed up about 25 pounds of produce, split between figs, cucumbers, banana peppers, zucchini, and carrots. After a quick stop at Wal-Mart (I know, I know--but they really do have great prices) for some half-pint jelly jars and a pot big enough to process quart-sized jars of pickles, I got to work. (I found the giant pot on clearance for only $17, but the look on Ryan's face could be priced much higher. "Now, are we borrowing that?" No--it's ours... so if anyone needs a 21.5-quart stock pot, let me know. You can borrow it!)

On Friday afternoon, I got started on the figs. I'd sterilized the kitchen the day before with hydrogen peroxide, and I kept my hands clean. With all the boiling, anyway, germs were nowhere to be found.

Fig Preserves

15 cups pureed figs (about 11 pounds)

5 1/2 cups sugar

1/2 cup lemon juice

First, prep the figs. Rinse them, trim the stems, and toss out any that look highly suspect (I think I only tossed out three figs!). Puree in batches with a food processor. Transfer to a large, heavy-bottomed pot (like a Dutch oven) and add sugar. 

Bring to a boil, stirring occasionally, until mixture has reduced and gelling stage is reached.

(I use the frozen plate method: place a small plate in the freezer before you begin. To test the jam, place a small spoonful on the plate and tilt the plate. Swipe your finger through the jam and count to five. If the line reconnects before you count to five, the jam needs more time. If it does not reconnect after five seconds, you're good to go. ) 

Once gelling stage is reached, add lemon juice and cook one more minute. Carefully spoon jam into sterilized jars. Wipe the rims clean and process for 15 minutes in boiling water. 

Friday, the figs got done (12 half-pints, two full pints, and a little left over that went straight to the fridge), and Saturday I worked on pickling the cucumbers. The way I was feeling, though, I only had energy to pickle and left out the documentation. Suffice it to say, three briny hours later I was exhausted and my Fourth of July plans were completely wrecked. Ryan took my brother to the concert we had tickets for, and I stayed home watching Barry Manilow and the National Symphony. 

Sigh. Like Ryan said, though, "At least we have pickles."

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where have i been?

So you're hungry for the next recipe, eh? Me too, but I've been too busy making mistakes like these in the kitchen:Ok, things aren't quite that bad. But I have been sick, and out of town, and...Alright, enough with the excuses. I've got a strawberry jam post in the works, and I of course have to show you the apple pie I made for my dad for Father's Day, right?

We're making a big trip to the farmers' market this weekend, as well as I'll be picking up cucumbers in Taylor to pickle. There's plenty on the dockett, and I promise to pick up the pace here at The Sustainable Diet!

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