Farro with farmers' market greens and vegetables

I went to a party last night carrying a big bowl of farro salad and it turned out to be such a hit, three women asked me if the recipe was in my book How to Fix a Leek and Other Food From Your Farmers' Market. They were very disappointed it wasn't. But how could it have been? Farro, the wheat berry of ancient Rome, is not a local farmers' market product; it mostly comes from northern Italy, places like Umbria and the Abruzzo. Also I was inventing that salad as I went along, ad libbing to get something very colorful and flavorful, appealing to the eye and stomach. I also wanted it to be very healthy.

But I don't like to disappoint. So here's essentially what I did. I cooked up a package of Umbrian farro found at a high end supermarket: in boiling heavily salted water for 15 minutes, just like pasta. In this case though, I flavored that water with peppercorns and celery seed so the already nutty farro would have even more distinct taste.

While the farro was cooking, I roasted a small head of cauliflower--broken into florets, and a red bell pepper, both doused lightly in olive oil, for 15 minutes at 450 degrees. And in a food processor, I chopped a bunch of flat leaf parsley, a bunch of arugula, a bunch of young purple onions in the fat scallion stage and three garlic cloves. By hand, I diced a large, juicy tomato, and then the roasted red pepper. I cut the cauliflower florets into tiny bite-size pieces. All those greens and vegetables had been purchased two hours earlier from my local farmers' market.


Once the farro was drained and cool, I put it in my large serving bowl and tossed in the dark green contents of the food processor and the chopped vegetables, red and white. The effect was confetti, which is to say delightful. I heavily salted and peppered. I had in front of me a picture of perfect health: grains and greens with Vitamin A and C loaded vegetables.

Then I whisked together a tsp of capers, the juice of 1/2 lemon, 2 tsp zest of that lemon, 3 tbsp balsamic vinegar and 1/2 cup very fruity olive oil. Something like that because I don't really measure. I wanted a salty, slightly tangy vinegar taste to brighten the nutty farro.

And somehow that large bowl of a vivid and vivacious salad came together in a half hour, perfect for a summer night. I ate the little leftover for lunch today with some Kalamata olives and a side of homemade tzatsiki flavored with mint instead of dill. It's all gone now but it's definitely a keeper.

Old King Kohl…rabi

I did a cooking demonstration and book signing this past weekend and the most mentioned and queried product included in my book was kohlrabi. It’s that outlandish looking light green or purple balloon now appearing regularly at farmers’ markets, with or without its leaves. Some people remembered eating it with immigrant relatives, others wondered what it is.

It is crisp like an apple or water chestnut and bittersweet, although its flavor could best be described as meek and mild. We use its German name, which literally means cabbage turnip, and indeed it is a cross between the two. It’s not however an underground bulb like its turnip ancestor. It grows above ground like a cabbage but throws up turnip-like leaves that make it look like a hot air balloon.

Frankly, I knew little about kohlrabi myself until a German friend came to visit me and immediately scooped up a few at our farmers’ market. She sliced one raw into salad to add delectable crunch. She diced another and sautéed it with onions and potatoes for a very tasty side dish with fish one night and chicken another. She grated it with carrots into slaw. I was hooked.

Kohlrabi is an ancient vegetable known to Pliny the Elder and Apicius, who in imperial Rome wrote our oldest known Western world cookbook. Charlemagne, who when crowned Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire in 800 AD ordered kohlrabi to be grown in all lands under his reign. It eventually made its way into Northern India with the English Raj and more recently into the cuisines of Israel and China.

Kohlrabi was actually king of kitchens from India to Sweden, for peers and peasants alike, until Columbus discovered America and its potatoes. It’s fallen in stature but it’s still beloved from South Asia (especially in Kashmir) to the North Sea and in parts of Africa. And why not? It’s full of vitamin C, potassium, calcium and dietary fiber, but not calories. And it lasts uncut in the refrigerator up to a month while you figure out how you want to serve it.

Kohlrabi can be treated like potatoes: fried, mashed, stuffed and baked. It can be prepared like cabbage: grated, as I said, into slaw. I use the large slicing side of a stand up grater or a strong peeler to make fat curly-cue strips, do the same with a few carrots and a daikon, and dress the slaw with cider vinegar with a splash of oil and dill seeds. Salt and pepper of course. It’s a no brainer, low cost preparation surprisingly refreshing on a hot day or beside a burger.

Kohlrabi is best when small and purple ones are said to be sweeter than the green. But there is a caveat: like asparagus, cabbages and even potatoes, they have a juicy white chemical, oxalate, that can induce swelling in the human body. The week I spent kitchen testing kohlrabi recipes for my book and ate about ten of them, my left index finger swelled miserably and ached, so I can attest to this.

Those with arthritis or gout may want to avoid it. Those who don’t suffer like that should just not fall too far in love with this modestly amazing vegetable and gorge on too many.

Keeping your cool

The extended weeks of withering heat we've been having may be unusual for New England but they're the norm in the eastern part of the Mediterranean where cultures have learned to cope by eating oily, salty foods. That's right: oily, salty foods--but not the no-no oily salty industrialized fare of our mass produced culture. I'm talking about vegetables grilled and braised in olive oil, fish served with capers, everything accompanied by salty cheese and olives. The salt helps the body retain moisture while it's sweating and the oil lubes joints so membranes don't dry out. It's food as efficient fuel.

In this light, look at the strategic brilliance of pesto. Its name derives from the pestle, the heavy implement that grinds ingredients in a mortar--for medicine or food or actually both since historically they have always been one and the same. Although we see it as deceivingly simple and ordinary, pesto is a concoction of fresh vitamin packed greens (basil), protein packed nuts (pine nuts), antibiotic garlic, salty protein filled cheese (usually Reggiano Parmesano or Pecorino) and lots of lubricating olive oil. Everything the body needs on a steamy day.

Here's a great way to benefit from it. Get a pound of fresh peas from the farmers' market and shell them. Put the pods in the water you boil for the pasta and when it's rapidly boiling, pull them out. They will have flavored that water. Cook up a mess of small pasta like ditalini or rotini or those small squiggles now available from Puglia. Three minutes before it's ready throw in the peas. Drain and rinse and combine the peas and pasta with fresh black pepper, cooked Maine shrimp or a roasted white fish and fresh pesto. Mound on fresh lettuce from the market and enjoy your lunch.

So now is also the time to braise, say, a pound of green beans in 1/2 cup olive oil with lots of garlic, onions, tomatoes, parsley and dill until they're soft. Chill and serve--perhaps with real feta (which should be slightly salty) and olives and a mound of fresh crabmeat blended with capers, parsley and lemon juice.

Or look up recipes for plaki or the Turkish classic cold and oily eggplant dish: imam bayildi. Or simply slice zucchini, eggplant and bell peppers into long strips and lavishly brush them with olive oil. Sprinkle salt over them and grill until soft. Then brush again with olive oil and serve garnished with chopped olives.

Or try roasting/baking a fresh caught halibut or cod or even flounder Greek or Yucatan style in a baking dish coated with olive oil. Put chopped tomatoes, pitted black or green olives, parsley, ground black pepper and capers on top and bake at 350 degrees until the fish is flaky. Serve with roasted or grilled new potatoes.

Cucumbers are here and to be cool as one of them, finely chop a few picklers into some thick yogurt. Toss in a minced garlic clove, salt and a chopped fresh mint. Serve as a salad.

In other words, you don't have to sweat it--even in the kitchen.

No grill but still...

It's mid July and the heat is on. Not just from summer sun but all those grills fired up for Father's Day. The patio in most households has probably now become the kitchen since throwing food on the grill is the easiest, most popular way to eat in the heat. Except at my house. I don't have a grill. I'm not against them, I just can't have one more thing to take care of. I don't want to be worrying about full propane canisters and the cancerous chemicals in briquets. And frankly, since everybody else grills when I visit them, I don't really miss it. The oven, indeed even the toaster oven, makes a very handy substitute.

Take those small potatoes showing up now at markets. I collect the bite-sized ones, line the toaster oven tray with foil, turn up the bake temperature to 450 and pile them on. I lightly salt and sprinkle olive oil over them, since oil will conduct heat into their core. Sometimes I toss a pinch of dried rosemary over them too. Ten minutes at 450 puts a smoky grill-like crunch in the skin and makes the potato itself melt in your mouth. Serve hot in a bowl with freshly ground black pepper and a pinch of good salt like Fleur de Sel. Sprinkle on chopped chives or parsley as eye catching garnish if you like.

Better yet, mix up the baby potatoes with baby onions and cloves of garlic.
Or don't just serve them plain. Serve them as an hors d'oeuvre with toothpicks, surrounded by a colorful array of dips: sourcream/onion, pesto, smoked salmon with dill and capers blended into whipped cream cheese, chili sauce, yogurt with cucumbers and garlic and mint, red pepper relish, black olive paste thinned with pureed cooked white beans.

You can give asparagus, shallots, red bell peppers, eggplant, zucchini and pattypan squash the same 450 oven roast "grill thrill" for 10 minutes too. Cut the peppers into thick strips, the eggplant into thin slices, zucchini into 1/4" thick slices.

One of the easiest, tastiest treats I know is to slice a yam (or sweet potato) or two on the diagonal into 1/8" thick disks, brush each on one side with a half olive oil and half soy sauce mix and roast the same way for 10-12 minutes until tender to a fork. You can treat eggplant this way too. This healthy preparation makes a great patio/porch hors d'oeuvre.

Great food with great taste doesn't get easier--or more delightful. About six years ago now, I told a friend's daughter to roast vegetables this way so she could impress the guy she'd decided was a keeper. Instead of going out to dinner on the third date, she volunteered to cook and produced roast leg of lamb with roasted vegetables. When four months later I actually met her chosen at the engagement party, the very first thing he exclaimed was: "Did you know she is an amazing cook ?!?!"

Yes, we can

Peas and strawberries are ready for their starring role at the farmers' market, but they're just going to be the warm-up act for the thrilling abundance of fruits and vegetables July will bring. This won't last long, so we have to do what we can to preserve it. The take-away from the continuously bad news about industrial food should be that it's a shame to waste the fresh taste of farm picked, letting it go by when it could brighten not only your health but a dark winter day. Now's the time to stock up on jam and canning jars--or lids for recycled ones, because they get harder and harder to find as summer moves on.

Preserving food is not drudgery, more work you don't need. For one thing, it can actually be fun, a very educational activity with kids on a rainy day, or after dinner on a foggy summer night. Stir raspberries into vinegar, or blueberries into chutney, or tomatoes into spaghetti sauce-- your way, or soup for the freezer. Then comes the joy of finding summer in the frozen doldrums of February, and having warm memories with your food. Making jam is not rocket science, making chutney is even easier, and preparing, say, tomato soup or red pepper sauce for the freezer almost a no-brainer.

But the more important "do can" reason for putting up with putting up food is psychological. Long ago I started stashing summer away as necessity because the food supply in Maine was severely limited and my ability to get through blizzards to it just as crimped. So it was for health and well-being, but particularly for buttressing those with the mental relief of knowing I had food--honestly good food-- on hand.

Now of course gassed tomatoes from Florida and "organic" blueberries from Chile are available everywhere all the time, but my hoarding habit is so strong, I'm still obsessed with pickling, jamming and sauces. I just can't let the harvest go by unheralded. I want to go in the flow of traditional rhythms for human life, to be participating in the real world as it really is, networking with Nature. I find honoring the seasons, the naturalness, this way to be very grounding, thus mentally relaxing in many ways.

The psychology goes deeper though. The urge to can or jam recognizes that nothing satisfies the human soul as much as the sight of a full larder, a re-assuring supply of something to eat. Our survival absolutely depends on food, which is why people get edgy when there's not much to pick at or up, not a lot of canapes and cheese at cocktail parties, no meals on planes. It has been the great marketing trick of corporations like Whole Foods and tastemakers like Martha Stewart to understand that abundance not only relaxes and removes inhibitions, it creates the buoyancy of joy. Those who walk into a party full of food are full of social spirit and ripe for conversation. Those who open the door to a well stocked pantry smile, for now they have freedom to go to other pursuits.

I am talking about our sense of security. It starts with food. So it's worth twenty minutes here, a half hour there, a few dollars for some jars, to have your own snowy day edible savings. You will have something on hand, know exactly what you are eating and realize what great benefits the summertime farmers' market can offer you.

P.S. If you've never done this before, How to Fix a Leek and Other Food From Your Farmers' Markets has easy recipes for blueberry apple chutney perfect for Christmas ham, the cranberry conserve I've made for 30 years for Thanksgiving turkey and midwinter roast chicken, for marinara (tomato) sauce, for pickled asparagus and dilly beans (favorite cocktail party and picnic food), even raspberry vinegar, and hints for how to make strawberry jam. Think of them as your starter kit and then do your own thing. These efforts make surprisingly welcome gifts for your friends too. I actually have greedy ones who wait to pounce.

Eats Shoots and Leaves

The markets are going green: spinach, baby kale, scallions, lettuce, chard, even in lucky places my special favorite, pea shoots. I fell in love at first bite in one of San Francisco's Chinese restaurants known for serving up huge platefuls seasoned with garlic, then chased them down in Chinese markets. I got so addicted, I badgered and bothered local farmers I knew to start thinning their pea crops to bringing those pulled shoots to market for me. "Plant extra peas just to get those shoots," I insisted. "I'll buy them. I'll get others to buy them. You won't be sorry."

Now, I can say with a "phew!", pea shoots have completed their migration from the East to the West to the east of that West, for now that June is busting out all over, they're showing at New England farmers' markets--and proudly featured too.

This is hugely good news. Pea shoots are not just a seductive prelude to the fully grown pod peas coming in July, but a perfect momentary tonic. Those leafy little sprouts have almost no calories and zero fat but almost the whole ABCs of vitamins: over the top Vitamin K, lots of C, significant A and the various Bs, even E. They're also chockful of antioxidants. Health by the handful but only at this precious moment before those pea vines grow up. So now or never...until next June.

There are shoots from the snow pea, the snap pea and the garden pod pea. The trick to enjoying shoots is to get the smallest, tenderest little tendrils you can find. I am not sure but tend to think they're more likely to come from snow pea vines than garden pea vines. But in any case, the best look like magnified alfalfa sprouts. If farmers wait longer to thin their crop, the shoot begins to get more stem and the stem begins to get tougher, which means more prep work and a sometimes a tough mouthful to swallow. If there are tough stems attached, break them off with your fingers and either contribute them to soup stock, rice water or your compost pile. Some Chinese Americans find fixing these older pea shoots so much work, they only eat them in restaurants--which allows those restaurants to charge plenty for them: up to $11 a dish.

But right now you can probably get tender shoots which are a no-brainer to serve. The quickest way to heat and eat is to rinse them thoroughly, don't drain them too much and put them still wet in a saucepan to steam in those remaining water droplets for 1 minute or two. Salt and serve. You can do this as a side dish with dumplings or chicken or you can throw them over pasta with fresh peas, seasoned with freshly ground black pepper and a hint of mint. Careful though: you don't want to do too much to compete with that lovely grassy pea flavor you can't get elsewhere.

Or, you can rinse them thoroughly and spin them dry so they really are dry. Then to feed 4, quickly stir-fry a heaping pound of them along with 8 cloves of garlic thinly sliced in 2 tsp of canola, soybean or olive oil for 20 seconds. Toss in a tbsp of vegetable broth, rice wine, sake or water, sprinkle on salt to taste, turn heat to high and shaking the pan, cook for one minute until the shoots are wilted. That's it.

You don't have to go to a San Francisco Chinese restaurant, consult gastronomy encyclopedias or give up any solstice revelry time to enjoy this sunny June treat. That just makes me love pea shoots even more.