Maybe
your home garden had a bumper crop, so every mixing bowl in your
kitchen is full of tomatoes. Or perhaps your neighbor, who has a green
thumb and a propensity for random acts of kindness, showed up at your
door with enough jalapeños to bring all of Mexico City to tears. Or was
it that the zucchinis at the farmer's market looked so beautiful that
you got a little carried away and now don't even have room in your
fridge for the milk?
Either
way, it's easy for fruits and veggies to pile up come summertime. If
you're ready to run screaming and leave the whole pile to rot—don't!
Here are some ideas for making delicious things out of LOTS of produce.
Too Many Tomatoes
Blender tomato sauce.
Fill your blender 3/4 full of cored, quartered tomatoes—should be about
a half dozen or so. Throw in a few cloves of garlic, a generous handful
of basil leaves, and a small onion or a small bunch of green onions or
scallions. Salt and pepper to taste, and blend with a little bit of
olive oil, tasting and adding up to 1/2 cup to get a smooth but not oily
consistency. When you stir this into fresh, hot pasta, the sauce will
warm up just enough.
Roasted tomatoes. Slice
tomatoes in half or in big chunks. Arrange on one or more baking sheets.
Add big handfuls of basil, cilantro, or spring onions, drizzle with
olive oil, and sprinkle with salt and pepper. Roast until tomatoes are
wrinkly and soft, and herbs are completely wilted and disintegrating.
Put into a bowl, and be sure to scrape all the oil and bits of herb off
of the baking pan. Makes a great pasta sauce, bruschetta topping, or
chunky topping for chicken, fish, or another cooked vegetable.
Tomato salad.
Mix a variety of colors and types of tomatoes, throw in some herbs, and
add a simple oil and vinegar dressing and a bit of salt and freshly
ground pepper. Just because it's salad doesn't mean it has to have
lettuce in it.
Tomato sauce. Yes, it's obvious, but this is the Cadillac
®
method for using up a whole lot of tomatoes at once. Plus, tomato sauce
freezes really well. There are too many recipes for us to recommend
just one.
A Surplus of Summer Squash
Grilled squash. Thickly slice squash lengthwise and roast on the grill.
Summer squash bake.
Slice or roughly chop a combination of summer squashes, enough to fill a
baking dish. Add fresh herbs if you have them. Grate a layer of
cheddar, jack, or even mozzarella on top, and use your fingers to sift a
little bit of the cheese down into the vegetables. Sprinkle whole-grain
breadcrumbs on top if you wish. Bake in a 350-degree oven until the
vegetables are soft and the cheese is beginning to brown. Cover with
foil if the cheese or breadcrumbs are browning too quickly. If the
finished dish is a bit watery (some summer squashes are more watery than
others when cooked), just serve with a slotted spoon.
Italian summer squash bake. Same as above, only add tomato sauce, and use mozzarella cheese.
Curried summer squash bake.
Same as squash bake above, only omit the cheese and add a drained can
of chickpeas, maybe some fresh greens, and 1 to 2 tablespoons curry
powder to taste, depending on the quantity of squash you're baking.
Your signature summer squash bake.
Are you getting the idea about this squash bake thing? Summer squash is
very mild in flavor, so it plays well with both eastern and western
spices. Make a squash bake whenever you need to use up zucchini plus
almost any other vegetable or herb or sauce or cheese.
Grate and freeze.
Use later for zucchini fritters, zucchini bread, in frittatas, as a
thickener for spaghetti sauce, or a filler in any kind of vegetable bake
or casserole.
Bustin' at the Seams with Basil
Pesto. Pesto. Pesto.
You can use basil a few leaves at a time in Caprese salads or tomato
sauce recipes. But if you need to use up a ton of basil in a hurry,
pesto is what you want. Experiment with the many recipes out there—with
or without cheese, with various kinds of nuts, with lots of olive oil or
very little. Pesto stores beautifully in the fridge, in a tightly
closed glass jar with a layer of olive oil covering it. Here's what you
can do with pesto:
- Smear it on bruschetta.
- Add it to green salads as a dressing.
- Use it as a pasta sauce; this is great with cherry tomatoes tossed in.
- Use it as a sandwich spread.
- Top grilled or roasted chicken, fish, or vegetables with it.
- Eat it with a spoon out of the jar.
A Cornucopia of Cucumbers
Raita.
This Indian cucumber-yogurt condiment can be thick like a dip, or thin
like a sauce, depending on the thickness of the yogurt you use. Thick or
thin, whip some yogurt with a whisk to even out its consistency. Then
stir it into to a bowl of chopped and (optionally) peeled cucumbers. Add
more or less yogurt as you wish. Salt it to taste. If you want a spicy
raita, add a seeded, finely chopped hot pepper.
Cucumber water.
Peel and slice one or more cucumbers and add to a pitcher of water.
Squeeze in a little lemon juice, and serve very cold as a refreshing
thirst quencher on a hot day.
Cucumber salad.
This was on the supper table almost every summer day when my mother was a
child in Kentucky. Very thinly slice cucumbers, pour a little bit of
white vinegar over them, and salt. Some people also add a little sugar,
but Mom would not approve. These are simple and delicious—but don't put
leftovers in the fridge for next time, because as they marinate in the
vinegar, they lose their crispness.
A Big Bell Pepper Buildup
Oven roast or grill.
As with basil, there are plenty of recipes that call for one or a few
red or yellow bell peppers. But when you have a real bell pepper glut,
roasting them is the way to go. Take as many red and yellow bell peppers
as you have and spread them on a hot grill, or on the top rack of the
oven, set to broil. If you're using the oven, line the peppers up on the
front edge of the rack, and put a baking sheet underneath them to catch
drips. When the skin blackens, give them a quarter turn with a good
pair of tongs, and repeat until the peppers are charred all the way
around. Then remove from the oven or grill and let rest. The charred
skin will peel easily off of the cooled peppers. Core and slice the
now-soft roasted peppers, coat the strips with olive oil, and store in a
tightly closed container. Use these in pasta and on sandwiches and
bruschetta.
Excessive Eggplantery
Many recipes call
for the notoriously spongy eggplant to be fried in oil. Roasting
eggplant instead is much healthier, and roasting on the grill imparts a
rich, smoky flavor. In addition to the recipes below, try adding roasted
eggplant to casseroles and veggie burgers.
Baba ghanoush.
This Middle Eastern dip is often served alongside hummus, with pita
bread. Slash one or more eggplants in several places and bake on a pan
in a 425-degree oven until very soft. This can take an hour or more,
depending on the size of the eggplants. Cool, then peel off the skin.
Throw the soft interior into a food processor. For each eggplant, add 2
cloves of garlic, 1/4 cup of tahini, 2 tablespoons of olive oil, and the
juice from one lemon. Blend just until incorporated, leaving the
texture a little rough. Salt to taste. To serve, make a little well on
the top of the baba ghanoush and pour some olive oil into the
depression. Sprinkle parsley over the top. (Adapted from
Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone by Deborah Madison.)
Roasted eggplant salad.
Roast eggplants as above, peel and roughly chop. Serve in a large salad
bowl with toasted pine nuts or walnuts, lots of parsley, and mint. If
you have too many tomatoes, chop and add a few of those. Dress with
either a light vinaigrette or with a bit of whipped yogurt.
Resource:
- American Heart Association: www.heart.org
- Yu
Wen Li, Zhao Ya Ping, Xue Zheng, Wang Da Pu (Shanghai Jiao Tong
University); Study on Synergistic Effect of Two Antioxidants and Its
Anti-ageing Properties [J]; China Oils and Fats; 2002
- Haibo
Wang, Muraleedharan G. Nair, Gale M. Strasburg, Yu-Chen Chang, Alden M.
Booren, J. Ian Gray, and David L. DeWitt. Antioxidant and
Antiinflammatory Activities of Anthocyanins and Their Aglycon, Cyanidin,
from Tart Cherries. Journal of Natural Products 1999, 62 (2), pp 294-2
Sometimes when I get home from work, the last thing that I want to do is cook, but I still want a delicious, healthy meal. Summer is great time to get creative in the kitchen with fresh produce and prepared foods from Harter House Supermarkets and Harter House World Flavors.
