Muskmelons

Honeydew and cantaloupe

By Sophia Markoulakis

August 22, 2008

We Greeks love our summer melon — especially right after a meal, before coffee and dessert. Growing up, we couldn’t leave the table until we had eaten our melon or other seasonal fruit that was meticulously carved by my dad.

Maybe it was his way of getting us to eat more fruit. Maybe it was his way of spending more time with us. Or maybe it was his way of making my brother and me spend more time together.

Melons are thought to have originated in Asia Minor, so they didn’t have to travel far to make their way to Greece. For centuries, the ancient Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans cultivated these members of the Cucumis family. Melons, squash, pumpkins, watermelon, and cucumbers fall into this large genus, and the resemblance is obvious.

Several species of Cucumis exist, including muskmelons such as honeydew and our version of cantaloupe. (True European cantaloupe is aptly named after the town Cantalopo in Italy and can be hard to find Stateside. It’s related to the muskmelon and has similar flesh, but its skin is light green and ribbed, not netted and brown.)

A slice of fresh summer muskmelon.

Melon season begins in June and lasts through the summer. The sun is a melon’s best friend; without extreme seasonal heat, these aromatic fruit bombs would simply wither on the vine.

When ripe, cantaloupes “slip” from the vine and shouldn’t have a stem attached. But honeydews continue to ripen when picked, can have a stem attached, and can be stored a bit longer than cantaloupes. Avoid melons that slosh when shaken or have any soft spots or bruising.

Honeydew melons don’t give off an odor when ripe; this absence of fragrance is reflected in the fruit’s other name, Inodorus. A good way to determine a honeydew melon’s ripeness is to feel its skin. It shouldn’t feel slick and might have brown “freckles” on its surface. These freckles and the slight stickiness to its golden-green skin indicate ripeness.

It’s much easier to determine if a cantaloupe is ripe. These netted melons give off an unmistakable sweet, musky fragrance. Their stem end will also give a little when pressed.

Ripe melon is intensely sweet and pairs well with other strongly flavored foods, such as hard and brined European cheeses, cured meats, and herbaceous plants. Dried ancho chile gives sweet cantaloupe a kick in Cantaloupe and Spinach Salad with Ancho Chile-Lime Vinaigrette. And the grilling process in Grilled Pork, Honeydew, and Fig Skewers brings out the natural sugars in all three ingredients, creating a perfect balance of flavors.

This time of year, with melons at their peak, experiment and have fun trying new flavor combinations. But you can still serve it the Greek way, lingering around the table with family and friends.

Sophia Markoulakis is a food and garden writer and recipe developer. She lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Favas

Grill, don’t blanch, these beans

By Jessica MacMurray Blaine

July 18, 2008

There’s something vaguely prehistoric about fava beans in the shell, all lumpy and enormous — and requiring that you buy them by the bucket in order to yield sufficient edible morsels beyond just a handful. But the delicate, nutty flavor within the two layers of shells (the pods and the skins) is worth the paces we go through to extract these sweet green lovelies.

When he sees me coming back from the farmers’ market toting a bag bulging with favas, my husband rolls his eyes and finds something else to do. He’s done sous-chef duty more than once, ripping the beans from their pods and blanching them briefly before finally removing the individual bean skins to reveal the bright green meat within. But he’s always happy afterward, as we savor warm favas with mint and lamb chops, or toss them with cream and peas and crab over pasta, or purée them and spread them on crusty grilled bread.

Nothing beats fresh favas.

Recently, however, my friend Ryan — one of my world’s great cooks and an encyclopedia of food knowledge — changed our fava-loving life.

“Just grill them,” he said.

“No shelling, no blanching, no green mush under the fingernails?” I asked, incredulous.

“Nope,” he said. “Just toss them with olive oil, salt, and pepper, then put them on the grill. Then you eat them like giant edamame, and the salt and oil comes through as you go.”

I couldn’t believe it. Shelling and blanching had been part of the deal, the tedium that earned us the wonderful pleasure of fresh favas.

But he was right. The shells blistered and produced beans that slid out of their skins with ease — and we were licking our salty fingers in no time.

Heirloom beans

Order beans online

By Emily Horton

July 10, 2008

I once knew a cook who called herself “The Bean Queen.” I admired her diligence: Every week, she cooked up a batch of dried beans and built her meals around them. But I could never find the inspiration to cook beans myself on a regular basis.

A few years ago, however, I discovered heirloom beans — and any ambivalence I had about legume cookery vanished.

Heirloom beans — distinctive varieties that have been saved and cultivated for generations — are easily interchangeable with conventional varieties. Baked into a simple bean gratin or worked into a bowl of pasta e fagioli, their taste and texture can be a revelation in comparison with ordinary dried beans.

A variety of dried beans.

Other heirloom varieties seem destined for particular uses. The ivory, pebble-sized Hutterite soup beans, for instance, purée into a beautifully creamy, nutty soup. Scarlet-hued Hidatsa reds just scream for festivity; they’re wonderful scooped into tacos or paired with rice and chunky guacamole.

Good Mother Stallards, mottled with fuchsia, are positively meaty, with a wonderful, rich flavor that makes an equally good pot liquor. I love to use them in a simple bean salad, brightened with a superior olive oil and flecked with bits of herbs and midsummer tomato.

If the beans themselves don’t inspire dinner, recipes like Drunken Beans or Madeira Beans with Garam Masala can send me running into the kitchen to fetch a bean pot.

Though heirloom beans are increasingly available in higher-end grocery stores, I prefer to order them from specialty retailers. Rancho Gordo and Seed Savers Exchange in particular stock wide selections of dried beans with a high rate of turnover, so you’re guaranteed fresh beans that cook up beautifully. (Kelly Myers also has tips for bean cookery in her article “I agree with McGee.”) They’re a little pricier than standard varieties, but I tend to think their nuanced taste and unique genetic heritage are reward enough.

Artichokes

Tiny thistles

By Ashley Griffin Gartland

June 4, 2008

I’ve always been drawn to bitty things: baby carrots, mini-muffins, and decorative teaspoons. So when I spotted adorable baby artichokes spilling out of a bin at the farmers’ market, I was easily and quickly persuaded to buy a dozen.

The catch was that I’d never previously prepared artichokes; I’d only ever spooned them from a can into pastas and salads for quick, easy artichoke enjoyment. After all, as Kelly Myers points out in her column on how to prepare an artichoke, prepping mature artichokes requires guidance and time.

Baby artichokes for sale at a farmers’ market.

Fortunately, preparing baby artichokes isn’t such a daunting task. They’re still thistles with stiff outer leaves, but these leaves easily pull off to reveal the prize: a tender, pale yellow-green heart.

After peeling away the outer leaves, I simply cut the top and the stem off, halved them with a paring knife, and tossed them into lemon water (the lemon keeps the exposed flesh from browning).

Next, I followed Ivy Manning’s recipe for Baby Artichoke and Fava Bean Salad with Pecorino, and within the hour was enjoying my first attempt at making an artichoke dish.

Later I realized that I could have also enjoyed them raw. Culinate has an Elizabeth David recipe for an Italian-style salad of raw artichokes. Mark Bittman, a big artichoke fan, features a recipe on his blog for shaved artichoke salad; it received so many inquiries and comments that he blogged about it twice. Finally, New York magazine recently ran a recipe for raw artichoke salad that’s quite similar to Bittman’s and as simple as it gets.

And this just in: Today in the New York Times Bittman shares yet another artichoke recipe, Little Artichokes Provençal Style, which requires cooking but is still straightforward enough to try on a weeknight soon.

Kohlrabi

Eat this strange vegetable raw and cooked

By Emily Horton

May 21, 2008

I’ve always had a soft spot for funny-looking vegetables, whether mutated (forked carrots, bell peppers with piggyback twins) or quirky by default (gnarly celery root). So, naturally, I was smitten with kohlrabi from the start.

Its exotic looks can be intimidating, to be sure. A member of the cabbage family, kohlrabi is prized for its bulbous stalk, which swells to peculiar proportions above ground, sprouting unwieldy, collard-like greens.

Purple kohlrabi at the market.

But its appearance belies its nature; pared down to its bulb, kohlrabi is remarkably low-maintenance and adaptable. Raw, it is crisp, sweet, and clean, strikingly reminiscent of raw broccoli stalks. Cooked, it touts a mild, nutty, cabbage-like flavor that adapts beautifully to cooking styles as polar as Indian and German, two cuisines in which kohlrabi has long been beloved (kohlrabi translates to “cabbage-turnip” in German).

During spring, when the markets are flooded with sweet, tender vegetables, I love to serve kohlrabi raw, shaved into a slaw or diced into a chopped salad. Fennel, radishes, and sweet turnips make for particularly flattering company, and a simple lemon-dill vinaigrette pulls everything together with a welcome tinge of acidity. But Kohlrabi Salad with Pea Shoots may be my new favorite; tossed with pea shoots and drizzled with sesame dressing, it accentuates the sweet, mellow crispness of kohlrabi I adore.

And don’t forget the greens. With a sturdy texture and a sweet flavor reminiscent of kale, they’re half the point. I like to sauté them simply with garlic, olive oil, and red chile, but Kohlrabi Greens with Toasted Sesame Oil and Soy Sauce is equally loveable and a bit less predictable, which, when I think about it, sounds just about right.

Nettles

Yes, you can eat these painful greens

By Jim Dixon

May 15, 2008

Tiny glass-like needles, each with a bulbous base filled with chemical irritants, cover the leaves of stinging nettles. The lightest touch shatters them and unleashes a poisonous brew of neurotransmitters, histamines, and formic acid, the same acid that makes bee stings and ant bites so painful. The smart thing is to avoid stinging nettles altogether.

Unless you want to eat them, that is.

A quick blanching neutralizes their sting, and when cooked, nettles have a robust, almost meaty flavor. The leaves are high in calcium and iron, and studies have confirmed their effectiveness as an anti-inflammatory, a use that goes back to ancient Greece.

Don’t pick stinging nettles after they’ve flowered.

While nettle greens can be used in any recipe that calls for spinach, my favorite approach is an adaptation of a recipe from Faith Willinger’s Red, White, and Greens cookbook. Subtitled “The Italian Way with Vegetables,” Willinger’s book demonstrates the Italian emphasis on the best local and seasonal ingredients. As she writes in the introduction, “Italians do exciting things with vegetables.”

Called subrich (soo-brick) in the Piemontese dialect of northern Italy, these are basically little eggy fritters, frittatine in Italian, served as an appetizer. Almost any tender spring greens can replace the nettles, but the flavor will be different. Later in the year, I use spinach, arugula, beet greens, or even broccoli rabe, and add a couple of tablespoons of chopped fresh herbs.

Stinging nettles (Urtica dioica) grow throughout North America, but are especially abundant in the wet coastal forests of the Pacific Northwest. Anyone who’s inadvertently stumbled into a patch remembers what they look like, and it’s easy (if painful) to test a leaf to make sure it stings. Bring along an experienced forager if it’s your first time out nettle-gathering, and don’t eat the leaves if the nettles have flowered or gone to seed. After that point, they develop bits of calcium carbonate which may cause urinary-tract irritation.

You might be lucky enough to find foraged nettles at your local farmers’ market during the spring and early summer. They often grow in the same places where morels are gathered, so ask your local mushroom pickers, too.

Celery

Put this backup singer at center stage

By Emily Horton

April 30, 2008

As a kid, I found celery the most unappealing snack food imaginable: fibrous, stringy, and unforgivably bland. Even in recent years, I could appreciate its workhorse utility in the background of a soffrito or a stock, but I seldom found myself lavishing it with praise.

Which is a shame, because celery is remarkably versatile as a main ingredient. At its best, celery is strikingly crisp and clean when raw, tender and gently sweet when cooked. Paired with ingredients that accentuate its best features, such as lemon and honey, celery is something not just to be relied upon, but to be celebrated.

Ordinary supermarket celery.

Two things made me reconsider celery. First, I discovered the skinny-stalked, prolifically leafy celery at my farmers’ market, called “cutting” or “leaf celery.” It’s crisp and sweet, with a stronger flavor than conventional celery.

Second, while dining at a favorite Latin American-inspired tapas restaurant, I tasted a celery salad starring shimeji mushrooms, toasted corn kernels, delectably grainy aged mahon cheese, and celery marinated in lime and ginger. It was a rapturous homage to celery.

You don’t need to purchase special celery to appreciate this everyday vegetable anew. When fresh and stored properly, common grocery celery (usually the Pascal variety) can be lovely all by itself. Toss thinly shaved celery with fennel, parsley, and a lemon vinaigrette for a quick salad, or make a main dish of smoked trout and celery salad. And if you’re lucky enough to find celery with an abundance of leaves, celery pesto will put them to great use.

Kiwis

A sweet-tart delight

By Carrie Floyd

April 16, 2008

In New Zealand, I was once told by a friend who spent a year there, it’s common to store kiwifruit at room temperature until they are sweet and pulpy, then eaten. I can imagine it, but it doesn’t appeal to me. After all, what I like about kiwis is the cheap thrill of tartness.

Lucky me, then, because tart fruit is what’s mostly available here. Kiwis in the store right now are mostly from California and were most likely harvested unripe in the fall, stored at a cooler temperature, then brought to market during what we’ve come to know as kiwi season: late fall into spring.

I like plain kiwis best.

Oregon farmers also grow two kinds of kiwi: the more common Hayward variety (large and fuzzy) and hardy kiwis (small and smooth-skinned). With twice the vitamin C of an orange and 20 percent more potassium than a banana, kiwis pack a nutritional punch; they’re also an excellent source of fiber.

What to do with them? Of course, they’re delicious in a fruit salad; I toss them with oranges, apples, and shredded coconut. Supposedly, though I haven’t tried it, turning kiwis into a marinade tenderizes meat. A riff on salsa — kiwi, shallots, cilantro, chiles, and lime juice — would dress up an otherwise plain piece of fish. But really, in my mind, kiwis taste best by themselves, cut in half and scooped out of their furry shells with a spoon.

Asparagus

Spears of spring

By Caroline Cummins

April 9, 2008

Slim and straight and easy to cook, asparagus has become one of those vegetables sold year-round in supermarkets. It always looks so pretty, so elegant and firm. And the taste is such an addictive combination of grass and mushroom, green things and meaty ones. But that’s only if you get it when it’s in season locally — not in the fall and winter, when it’s shipped in from South and Central America.

As Deborah Madison has pointed out on these pages before, we may think of asparagus as an early-spring treat. But asparagus season varies: January in the hottest parts of California, May in Michigan, even July in Canada. So figure out when asparagus is local to you, and buy it then.

There’s no taste difference between thin and thick asparagus; the thin stalks, obviously, cook faster, and some people prefer to peel the thick ones. White asparagus looks ghostly but is simply the result of mounding dirt over the stalks as they grow, preventing chlorophyll from doing its thing. Some folks prefer the milder flavor of white; others think it’s a sort of cruel and unusual asparagus punishment.

All types, however, need nothing more than a rinse under water, a snap in the middle, and a trip to the steamer, grill, broiler, roasting pan, or skillet. (Don’t bother with a fancy asparagus steamer; a stockpot with a pasta insert, or an ordinary steam-basket setup, will work fine.)

Breaking the stalks at their middles is optional; you’ll know you’re a stalk-breaker if you find yourself chewing the fibrous root ends with distaste. To snap asparagus, simply pick up a stalk and bend it gently; it’ll snap naturally at the point where the stalk is turning fibrous. Compost the fibrous ends, or save them to make asparagus stock.

Jane Grigson likes her asparagus with potatoes and eggs. Deborah Madison tosses the tips into an Asian-style noodle salad or just roasts the stalks in olive oil. And Carrie Floyd, Culinate’s food editor, prepares asparagus with a lemon vinaigrette.

Chervil

Seek out this shy wallflower

By Emily Horton

March 26, 2008

Every time I spot chervil’s feathery, kelly-green leaves at my farmers’ market, I feel a silly little rush of glee. Perhaps it’s because chervil makes itself available to me only a few temperate months a year, or because it signals the arrival of the rest of spring’s luxuries. Regardless, I can scarcely get enough of it before the heat scares it away until fall.

Chervil looks like parsley, its close relative, but tastes more delicate.

Chervil isn’t widely adored in the U.S., but it’s a fixture in French kitchens, where it’s a component of the classic fines herbes quartet (chervil, chives, parsley, and tarragon). But where parsley is zippy and bold, chives onion-tinged, and tarragon aggressively seductive, chervil offers a simple, grassy clarity and just a tease of delicate, anise-tinged sweetness.

Because chervil is so soft-spoken, it needs to be used in quantity and in company with similar mild flavors; otherwise, its voice will be lost. Likewise, too much heat will trash chervil’s flavor, so add it only in the last few minutes of cooking. Still, so long as flavors stay low-key, chervil is remarkably flexible.

This time of year, I like to snip chervil leaves and fennel fronds into a salad of mixed lettuces and shower it over a soup of sorrel or leeks. I also use it to finish a spring-vegetable ragout: young radishes, turnips, carrots, spring onions, and peas sautéed in a bit of butter and white wine just until tender, then finished with a flourish of finely chopped chervil.

One of my favorite applications for chervil, though, is even simpler: a generous teaspoon or two, along with a pinch of sea salt, folded into a few farm-fresh scrambled eggs just as I bring the eggs away from the heat. Add some good crusty bread and a green salad, and there’s lunch, courtesy of the season.

Read Cindy Burke’s blog post about spring chives.