Because Patrick is from Arkansas, I don’t get to complain about New Mexico’s heat and occasional humidity.  “Humid!”  He declares.  “You don’t know humid!”

And he’s got a point. This is the southwest, not the south. As for the heat, it doesn’t seem to bother him, despite which has been damn hot, mosquito filled, and to my mind and most everyone else I know, humid. Or at least humidish. The problem with such weather is that it messes with dinner and cooking in general. It’s easy for a gin and tonic or cold grapefruit juice with Campari and soda to stand in for a meal, but despite the juice and the lime, drinks really aren’t food. Just cool comfort and there’s nothing wrong with that.

A salad makes a good supper, though, as does a fish taco, or soup. Cold organic tomato juice with cilantro, diced avocado and lime is a good way to go. A chilled carrot and Magliette Calcio A Poco Prezzo ginger soup, a thin crouton with a swipe of goat cheese is another. I can’t imagine attempting much more when it’s near 100’ in the evening, but yesterday I did.  I made a beet soup, something I haven’t made in quite a while. I had bought beets thinking we should have more substantive vegetables on the menu, and a vision of beet soup came to mind. I recalled my grandmother’s lady friends who used to puree borsch with sour cream and drink it by the glass on hot days. As a child I thought it was raspberries and cream they were enjoying, and was pretty let down with my first sip. Now I know better.

So I turned on the fan, opened my soup book, and made the Red Beet Soup with Beets and Their Greens. I don’t know why it’s in the chapter devoted to winter vegetable soups because it’s a great summer soup.  I made the stock because you really need it here. I diced the beets, carrots, and pepper, ignored the fact I didn’t have any leeks, steamed the beet greens, and used more than a pinch of allspice and anise seed. In less maglie calcio poco prezzo than a calm hour I had a gleaming red on red soup.  Patrick came home, we sipped our drinks and didn’t discuss the heat, then I served the soup.  It was tepid, and we had it that way, with the beet greens and a good spoonful of sour cream. It was sweet, cool, chunky and just right for dinner. Well chilled, it was just right for lunch today, and I’ll be it will see us for dinner tonight as well.  Maybe pureed with some sour cream just to have a different texture and hopefully, though it’s unlikely, some good black bread.

So if you’re in the summer heat doldrums, you might give this, or some other beet soup, a try.

Red Beet Soup                   

This beet soup uses the whole vegetable—roots, stems, and leaves. You’ll do well to make the stock, which simply uses more of the Cheap Jerseys vegetables that you’re already using for the soup.  Begin it first and by the time you’re ready to add it to the vegetables, it will be ready. As for the pepper, peel it, especially if the skin is waxed.  Peeled, there won’t be any skins to roll up into little scrolls. (In a pinch, I’ve used jarred roasted peppers and they were fine.)  

The Stock

1 tablespoon olive oil

1 cup leeks greens and the roots, well washed

1 onion, 1 carrot, and1 celery rib, all chopped

3 bay leaves

pinch of thyme or a thyme sprig

few pinches oregano or a fresh branch of leaves

3 garlic cloves, smashed

the stems of 1 bunch red beets

a handful of lentils

1 teaspoon sea salt

 The Soup

1 tablespoon each olive oil and butter

3 small leeks or 1 large, the white parts only sliced into rounds

1 onion, finely diced

2 thin carrots, peeled and thinly sliced in rounds

1 red pepper, peeled and diced

3 medium sized beets, about 8 ounces, peeled and diced

3 small bay leaves

1/2 teaspoon dried oregano

hefty pinch of allspice or anise seeds

1 finely minced large clove of garlic

1 tablespoon brown sugar

1 15-ounce can organic diced tomatoes, fire-roasted or not, or 1 cup fresh, peeled tomatoes, diced

the beet greens, roughly chopped

sour cream and 1 lemon, quartered or apple cider vinegar

1.  To make the stock, heat the oil in a pot, add the leek greens and root, onion, carrot, celery, garlic and herbs.  Give a stir and cook over high heat, stirring frequently, until the vegetables take on a little color.  Add the rest of the ingredients and 6 cups water.  Bring to a boil, then lower the heat and simmer gently while you prepare the soup vegetables.  Be sure to turn it off after 30 minutes as it will go from red to brown about at that point.  As you peel the beets, add the peels, along with any other vegetable trimmings, such as the ends and veins of the bell pepper, to the stock.

2.  While the stock is cooking, heat the oil and butter in a wide soup pot. Add the vegetables, (minus the beet greens), bay leaves, oregano, allspice, and garlic.  Stir to coat, then cook over medium heat for 12 to 15 minutes. Season with 1-teaspoon salt and the sugar.  Strain the stock directly into the pot.  Simmer, partially covered, until the beets are tender-firm, 20 to 25 minutes.  Taste for salt and season with pepper.

3. Cook the beet greens in a little water with a pinch of salt until tender, 3 to 4 minutes, then drain.  Serve the soup and add a clump of greens and spoonful sour cream to each.  Serve with the lemon on the side, for those who wish.

Makes 2 quarts. 

From Vegetable Soups from Deborah Madison’s Kitchen

There’s nothing unusual about cooking dinner alone. I cook dinner for myself and my husband (and quite possibly others) pretty much every night of the week. I look forward to getting out of my head and into my hands, getting away from the computer and into foodstuffs. Cooking dinner is never a chore.

Cooking is slow time for me, often alone time.  I don’t usually play music. Maybe, if I need a serious energy boost, I put on a Michael Franti CD.  But the silence is good, too. That is, the sounds of cooking. Water running. Chard draining. The hum of the gas. The thonk of the knife on the board. The sizzle when onions are thrown into a hot pan.  Just the sounds of everyday activities in the kitchen, plus the evening wind in the Oakley Sunglasses cheap trees.  The other night I asked myself, do I think when I cook? Or chatter away mindlessly in my head?  Or is cooking more a quiet meditation?  Sometimes it is the latter, a focused, non-thinking activity, but sometimes I’m thinking, too.  The other night I found myself thinking about how the same day I turned in my book Seasonal Fruit Desserts, my food processor quit.  A part wore out; it’s a rubber ring of some sorts that made the top and bottom cohere. I called the Kitchen Aide people but didn’t get any leads as to a replacement part, so basically I gave it up. I’ve never found a food processor I’ve wanted to replace it with so I’ve done without for the past 2 years.

I was thinking about this because I was going to make a hazelnut frangipane for an apricot tart, which involves mixing together nuts, butter, egg and a few other ingredients until absolutely smooth. The food processor is, in fact, an ideal tool for the job, but since I didn’t have one, I got out my Zyliss cheese grinder and ground the toasted hazelnuts by hand. It was a hot day and the butter softened and eggs warmed up. In the end it wasn’t a big deal to make frangipane by hand, or the tart dough, and dessert was too good for just two people.

Basically, this has been true of everything I used to unthinkingly pull out the food processor for —making pie dough, salsa verde, breadcrumbs.  There isn’t a thing you http://www.oakleyonorder.com/ can’t use a knife, a whisk or another tool for, including your hands, and end up with good results, a bit of a workout, and a lot less stuff to clean.  As I smoothed the cream into the pre-baked tart shell, I realized that I’ve rather enjoyed this stretch of time without the food processor.  My knife skills are probably better and I get a lot more direct contact with my food while slowing down in a nice focused sort of way.  Handwork provides a kind of governor on my kitchen activities, too. I might think twice about making dessert, and that’s not a bad idea. Or if making frangipane was enough of a process, then I’ll skip the tart dough and use it to fill a halved apricot or plum and save a bunch of calories, too.

Hazelnut Frangipane By Hand                                         Enough for or or 2 9-inch tarts or galettes

You can use almonds, but hazelnuts are awfully good, too. Use this with stone fruits, especially apricots and plums, and also with pears. You can use it to line a tart shell, smooth over galette dough, or drop it directly into a halved fruit, which you’re planning to roast. It’s good stuff to have around.

1 cup hazelnuts, toasted and skinned

 1/8 teaspoon salt

 ½ cup organic sugar

1 tablespoon flour

2 tablespoons hazelnut oil

4 tablespoons soft butter

1 whole egg

1 egg yolk

1 tablespoon Frangelico (optional)

Grind the hazelnuts by hand in a nut or cheese grinder to make delicate flakes, then mix them with the sugar and flour. Add the oil and butter and beat with a wooden, then add the cheap oakley egg, egg yolk, and Frangelico, if using. Beat until well blended. Use immediately, or store in the refrigerator to use later in the week. If you just can’t find an immediately use for it, freeze it until you do.

Grape Pie Season

There are a few fall indicators I look too every year—besides a drop in temperature and falling leaves. One is the way plants look so ragged and tired, their now yellow and crisp, their fruits getting smaller, flowers blooming on ever-shorter stems.  Another is the sign that I do have gophers and they’re getting ready for winter in a most annoying fashion, mainly by eating my Echinacea and roses.  A subtler indicator is a http://www.veridianinc.com sense of stillness that fills the air, even when the wind is blowing. It’s more like breathing and sighing than the destructive idiot winds we usually have.

There are more signs, like the quince turning yellow. But most important is that it’s time for grape pie. Concord grape pie.  Either purple or green Concords will do, but don’t mix them. It’s not so pretty. 

Long one of my favorite desserts, I am sure to make a grape pie at least once each fall.  If there aren’t many grapes, it might be a tart, rather than a pie. If grapes are plentiful you might see a full blown double crusted pie on my table. If I can’t deal with making a crust, a crisp will have to do and it does do nicely.  In any case, this is a dessert worth making and something of an old-fashioned American one, too.  My father, and Iowan, is the one who taught it to me, and mid-westerners know a thing or two about pies.  Choose your favorite pie dough, enough for a top and bottom. Here’s how the filling goes:

 

2/12 to 3 pounds Concord grapes

½ to ¾ cup sugar

3 tablespoons flour

grates zest and juice of 1 lemon

 

Wash the grapes as you’ll be using the skins as well as the pulp.  Slip them out of their skins by squeezing them into a saucepan and set the skins aside in a bowl.  Simmer the grapes until they turn white and the seeds loosen, after 5 to 10 minutes, then pass them through a food mill to maglie calcio poco prezzo separate the seeds, working directly into the bowl with the skins. Return the pulp and the skins to the pan, add ½ cup of the sugar, the flour, and lemon zest. Cook to dissolve the sugar, then taste and add more if needed. Stir in the lemon juice and let the mixture cool for about 15 minutes. Use now or refrigerate or freeze the filling to use later.

Preheat the oven to 400’F.  Pour the cooled filling into a pastry-lined pie tin and cover with a second crust.  Join the top and bottom, flue the edges, then brush some beaten egg yolk over the top.  Use the tip of a knife to etch a decorative design into the dough, then cut a whole in the top for a vent.  Set the pie on a cookie sheet and bake in the middle of the oven for 10 minutes. Lower the heat to 350’ and bake for another 35 minutes or until the crust is golden brown. Remove and let cool before serving with cream or a piece of aged Cheddar or Gouda cheese.