Tomatoes

Great balls of fire

By Caroline Cummins

September 8, 2009

By late August, the many tomato plants my husband grew from seed this spring were finally fruiting. Paste tomatoes, little round cherry tomatoes, large yellow Lemon Boy tomatoes, plump orange Persimmon tomatoes, and red-and-green blushing tomatoes that we have no name for since my husband has grown them, for three years, from a now-forgotten tomato purchased at a farmers’ market. And that’s just the start of the harvest.

Last year’s harvest, due to drab summertime weather, was accordingly blah. But this year — despite the intense 105-degree heat waves we’ve had — is looking like a red tsunami of tomatoes. Which means that, while we’re eating plenty of them in their natural, fresh state, we’re also looking for ways to preserve them for the winter.

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Strawberries

The queen of berries

By Caroline Cummins

June 15, 2009

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Radicchio

The red-and-white chicory

By Sophia Markoulakis

February 24, 2009

Head for the salad section of any good grocery store, and you’ll likely find burgundy globes of radicchio next to the tender greens and fresh herbs. Such shelving makes perfect sense during the summer, when nothing beats a chilled salad on a hot day. But come winter, those ruby-hued heads really should be displayed next to the other cold-weather greens, such as kale, mustard, and collard greens. I like my radicchio raw and slightly bitter in the summer, but cooked to sweet softness in the winter.

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Sweet potatoes

Try the Japanese version

By Sophia Markoulakis

November 25, 2008

No matter how many times I remind myself that the sweet potato and the yam are not the same tuber, I still hesitate when asked to explain the difference. It’s a problem of nomenclature: Nearly all of the “yams” that we come across in North American markets are actually sweet potatoes. And sweet potatoes aren’t related to potatoes.

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Pears

Seek out local varieties

By Sophia Markoulakis

October 1, 2008

Few fruit specimens have had the adoring love of poets, horticulturists, and kings like the pear. Homer praised the pear as a “gift from the gods.” The 17th century Versailles gardener Jean-Baptiste de La Quintinie dutifully developed new varieties, and King Louis XI tended to his Bon Chrétien tree so tenderly that it’s said that it prolonged his life for months. (Alas, he died shortly before its first harvest could properly ripen, and so never got to enjoy its fruit steeped in honey and wine.)

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Okra

A Southern classic

By Emily Horton

September 10, 2008

At markets throughout the Southeast, you find okra piled into two-toned heaps of mossy green and magenta, so vibrant that passing it up feels downright ungrateful. I never do. Instead, as okra reaches its seasonal peak in late summer, I start worrying about whether I’ll find the time to cook everything I have planned for it.

This might sound loony to anyone whose sole experience with the stuff has involved a fryer bubbling with peanut oil, or who, disenchanted with okra’s mucilaginous tendencies, just can’t get past eating it any way except fried.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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.

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