Sister Fish

My sister, Susannah, was skilled in the kitchen long before I realized that I loved to cook. While I was traipsing around the backyard choreographing dance routines for an audience of stuffed animals, Susannah, age 10, was perfecting tomato quiche, a dish I pretended to be bored of as a matter of jealous principle. We each took our roundabout ways to get back to the kitchen and now, Susannah owns her own cafe, Bread & Circuses, in Barcelona, turning the Catalonian crowd onto the virtues of the American sandwich.

On the rare occasion that Susannah and I find ourselves in the same country and in the same kitchen, true to Taylor-family form, we spend breakfast talking about what to eat for lunch and spend lunch discussing what we'll have for dinner. Cooking together has become part stage, and part classroom for each of us, an opportunity to show off but also to see what dishes the other has come to love. Our palettes were trained on the same food for much of our lives, but our takes are different--let's just say I tend more towards "buckwheat" and she towards "butter". From time to time, each of us produces a dish that could just have easily sprung from the other's brain.

A few weeks ago Sus did just that with this incredibly simple fish dish. It combines many of my favorite flavors in a single roasting pan--lemon, olives, fennel, peppers-- and it only takes about 15 minutes to cook. For those of you who are intimidated by cooking fish, which can seem complicated, this is a great way to test the waters. This time I can't feign boredom and must give credit where credit is due. Sister fish is delicious.

Sister Fish

feeds 4

One 1.5 pound very fresh cod filet (or four small filets)

1/2 bulb of fennel

1/2 a red onion

4 cloves garlic

1 small red or orange bell pepper

1/2 a cup good green olives

1 lemon

olive oil

salt and pepper

Preheat the oven to 450 degrees.

Using a mandoline or a very sharp knife, carefully juilenne the fennel, peppers and onion. Place them in the bottom of a roasting pan.

Add the peeled garlic cloves and olives to the pan along with a glug of olive oil and some salt and pepper. Toss the vegetables well until they are somewhat evenly mixed and coated, and make a thick layer in the bottom of the pan.

Again, using the mandoline or a knife, slice enough paper-thin rounds of lemon to form a single layer over the vegetables.

Place the fish filet(s) in a single layer on top of the lemons. Drizzle with a bit more olive oil. Salt and pepper the fish, place in the oven and cook for about 15 minutes, until the fish is just cooked through. It should flake easily away when prodded with a fork but should still be moist. The vegetables should be soft and starting to let their juices into the bottom of the pan. 

Using a metal spatula, divide the filet into four even pieces. Distribute the vegetables evenly among the four plates and top each with a piece of fish. Add a bit more salt and pepper to taste and serve with a wedge of fresh lemon.

Slow Roasted Gigante Beans with Tomato and Artichoke

There are few things I love more than a summer garden bounty. A unique excitement comes over me when I step out of my door and walk a few feet into the garden to determine what I will eat for my next meal. The part of my brain that requires tangible results, proof of patience or of hard work or of quantifiable value, really loves gardening. The carrot patch is full of weeds? Hours later it can be picked clean, thinned out and tidy, leaving only the cheerful froth of carrot tops, breathing more easily in their newly spacious soil. The thinnings become a snack or pesto or compost. When it all goes well, nothing is wasted. But bounty is not without its challenges. I remember Sandor Katz saying in an interview that no one told him when he first started gardening that everything would ripen at the same time. What do you do with all that produce? Katz's solution was fermenting and preserving.

As you know, this is not the first time I've confronted the issue of overabundance in the backyard. After swearing off zucchinis, the problem is easier to deal with. The plants that won't stop producing this year are the Sungold tomatoes. We harvest them daily and still, within hours of picking the vines clean, I look outside and see the sweet, orange little orbs that I missed or that have suddenly ripened, taunting me, reminding me that there is work yet to do. Luckily, the fruit is delicious raw, right off the vine. But when the counter is covered in overflowing bowls of tomatoes, some processing is required. 

Slow-roasting tomatoes is a great way to preserve. The flavors get concentrated, richer, full of that ever elusive umami quality. They are delicious spread on sandwiches, made into a dip, or added to pasta sauces and stews. Roasted tomatoes easily last a week in the fridge. It's also nice to throw them in the freezer and pull them out in the winter when grocery store tomatoes are nothing more than hard and tasteless imposters.

A happy accident brought me to this next recipe. I wasn't long into roasting a pan of tomatoes when I realized my timing was off and I needed to leave the house before the roasting was complete. I pulled the tomatoes out after about an hour and left them to cool on the stove top. They were soft, bursting out of their skins, full of the bright, sweet flavors of the raw fruit, but with an added complexity and a slight richness to them.

Hours later, hungry and out of patience for a slow roast, I turned to improvisation for inspiration. I had gigante beans in the fridge from earlier in the week and a couple of cans of artichoke hearts. I threw the artichoke hearts, tomatoes, a few cloves of garlic and the white beans into a roasting pan, covered it all with some chicken stock and threw it in the oven for an hour. The result, topped with pecorino and basil, was a hot dish of comforting, savory beans, hearty enough to be a meal alone and with all the lightness of summer time food. I have recreated this with slight tweaks, every week since the first try. Fingers crossed, this bounty lasts a few more weeks.

Gigante Beans with Roasted Artichokes & Sungolds

1.5 cups gigante beans, rinsed and soaked overnight

2 cans artichoke hearts, rinsed & halved

2 cups sungold tomatoes (halved if very large)

1/2 cup chicken stock

6 cloves garlic, peeled and smashed

olive oil

handful purple basil

fresh grated Pecorino Romano to garnish

salt and pepper to taste

To cook the gigante beans pour the beans and soaking water into a large pot. Add more water to cover if needed. Bring the beans to a boil then reduce to a simmer and cook until a fork goes easily through. You want them to still have a bit of firmness. This takes 45 minutes to an hour. This step can be done the day before.

Preheat the oven to 250 degrees. On a rimmed sheet tray spread the tomatoes in a single layer. Drizzle with olive oil and toss gently to evenly coat. Roast about 45 minutes and remove the tray and increase the temperature on the oven to 400 degrees.

Combine the beans, garlic, tomatoes and artichoke hearts in a roasting pan. Add the chicken broth, a generous dash of salt and lots of cracked black pepper. Stir everything together well and return to the oven. Let bake for 45 minutes to an hour, stirring occasionally. If the pan dries out, add more chicken broth. The longer you can let the pan go, the softer the beans become. 

Once everything is cooked to your liking, remove the baking dish and let cool for 5 minutes. Serve alone or as a side, topped with chopped basil, fresh grated Pecorino Romano, more pepper and maybe some lemon zest too.

Gluten Free Nut Butter and Jam Sandwich Cookies

Rarely do I feel the urge to bake, and much to my annoyance, when the mood strikes it is usually late at night, or in the middle of a blizzard, or when I am just downright too lazy to go back into town to the store. What this means is that I often find myself ill-equipped for following a recipe as it's written. I'll have baking powder but no baking soda, brown sugar but no powdered sugar. A 1/4 bag of chocolate chips will be wallowing in the cupboard along with 2 tablespoons of oatmeal and more shredded coconut than I can ever remember buying but I won't have enough of any one thing to make even a half batch of a single recipe. So I improvise. Often the substitutions and tweaks end up being delicious but there have been some real train wrecks too. I remember one particularly abysmal carrot cake cooked in a tiny cottage at the end of a dead end road during a snow storm in Maine with my best friend after too many bottles of wine. I confess, we ate half of it anyway. Maine in winter can call for desperate measures.

On an unusually peaceful Sunday afternoon last week I suddenly wanted nothing more than to make cookies. I knew I had the basics for something as simple as a sugar cookie, and then I remembered all the half eaten jars of jam in the fridge. With no toaster in the house and bread only making a rare appearance in the kitchen, we suddenly have a glut of jam and no vehicle. I started searching the web for simple, gluten free, thumb print cookies. Instead, I stumbled upon a recipe for peanut butter and jam sandwich cookies. Of course! What goes better with jam than good, old PB?

True to form I had barely a quarter of the peanut butter I needed and it was of the chunky variety, not the called-for smooth type. But when has something as silly as having the necessary ingredients stopped me from trying a new recipe? I mixed the chunky stuff with smooth almond butter and followed the rest of the recipe to the letter (though I did add twice as much salt as suggested and cut out a little of the sugar).

These were by far, the easiest, fastest, yummiest peanut butter cookies I have ever made and they are definitely going to be a staple now. I slathered a few with raspberry jam, a few with Lingonberry jam, and the last with fig preserves. The cookie is light and airy and not to sweet and it actually gets softer a day later making it even more like the best PB&J sandwich--chewy, and with the perfect ratio of PB to J. You can easily swap the peanut butter for another kind of nut butter, though if you use cashew or walnut butter I would add even more salt to the recipe. This would also be a great cookie for making ice cream sandwiches. Just saying.

Nut Butter & Jam Sandwich Cookies

adapted from Haut Appetit

makes about 10 sandwiches

1 cup natural peanut or other nut butter (smooth or chunky or mix of the two)

1 large egg

1/2 cup sugar

1 T almond or other dairy free milk

1 T brown rice or other gluten free flour

1 t baking soda

1 t salt (or more if using a sweeter nut butter)

favorite jam or jams

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Line two cookie sheets with parchment paper

In a large mixing bowl beat the egg and sugar together until creamy and frothy. Stir in the almond milk. Add the nut butter and stir with a wooden spoon until well combined.

Mix in the flour, baking soda and salt until well combined. Taste a little bit and adjust salt as needed.

Using a tablespoon, scoop the batter onto the cookie sheets. Dampen a fork in water and use the back of it to flatten each ball of dough, leaving a criss-cross mark on each one.

Bake 15 minutes or a little longer. You want the edges to be just slightly golden.

Let the cookies cool slightly. Spread a generous layer of your favorite jam onto the flat side of one cookie and place the flat side of another cookie on top of it, pressing gently to seal the sandwich. Repeat until you run out of cookies.

These cookies will keep really well in an airtight container for several days, if you can keep your hands off them.

Spring Chicken Soup

Forsythia! Eucalyptus! Live Oak! Red Bud! Yes, it is spring time in California, less affectionately (and in an alarmist tone) referred to as ALLERGY SEASON (cue doomsday foreboding music). But seriously people, happy as we all are to see our surroundings brightening and blooming, many of us are also suffering a bit from constant symptoms of allergies which can bring on or just mimic the symptoms of a bad head cold. Old fashioned as it may be, there is nothing better tasting to me when I feel stuffed up and foggy than hot chicken soup. I don't quite remember when it entered her repertoire, but at some point my mom started making an Asian-inspired chicken soup with coconut milk, tangy kaffir lime leaves and that unmistakable laser-like citrus taste of lemongrass. 

This soup is packed with major immune boosters and a host of powerful digestive aids, expectorants, sore throat soothers, and other curative wonders described below. 

I have tried to recreate mom's perfect soup from memory a couple times with subpar results. Eventually I combined my memory of her soup and a Tyler Florence recipe. The result is near-perfect, though I have to say, when I am under the weather, nothing is quite as healing or comforting as Mama herself.

Coconut Chicken Soup

adapted from Tyler Florence on The Food Network

2 Boneless, skinless chicken breasts (about 1.5 lbs), cut into 1-2inch cubes

1 quart Organic chicken broth

1 stalk lemon grass, white part only, cut in half lengthwise

1 4-inch piece of ginger (or galangal) peeled and thinly sliced

1 Habanero pepper, de-stemmed and halved lengthwise

4 large garlic cloves, peeled and crushed with the flat side of a knife

1 (13oz) can full fat coconut milk

2 T Thai fish sauce

Shitake and other mushrooms, halved (or quartered if large, about 10oz)

4 limes, juiced

a scant 1/2 cup of corn starch

1/4-1/2 cup coconut oil

3 scallions, chopped

chopped cilantro and basil to top

In a bowl, toss the chicken cubes with the corn starch until each piece is well coated.

Heat a pan over medium-high heat and let half of the coconut oil heat until fully melted. Working in batches, cook the chicken in one even layer, letting brown on one side before flipping it over with tongs. About 5 minutes on each side depending on the size of your chicken cubes. Place the cooked chicken on a paper towel-lined plate or sheet tray. You may need to add more coconut oil between batches.

In a large pot bring the broth to a boil over medium heat. Add the garlic, ginger, pepper, lemongrass, and mushrooms, cover, reduce heat to medium-low and let simmer for about 10 minutes to infuse the broth with the herbs.

Uncover, add the chicken, fish sauce, coconut milk and lime juice. Simmer about 5 more minutes until chicken is heated through.

Ladle into bowls and top with  chopped scallion, cilantro and basil, and maybe even a wedge of lime if you have extras lying around.

Foods That Bring the Fight*
Coconut Milk: A complete protein, chemically comparative to mother's milk, warming, thirst quenching, high in organic iodine which has laxative properties and soothes internal membranes.

Garlic: Antibacterial, antifungal, antiseptic, digestive, expectorant, detoxifier. As Dianne Onstad notes, "One raw crushed garlic clove contains the antibiotic equivalent of one hundred thousand units of penicillin."

Ginger: Antispasmodic, appetizer, expectorant, promotes circulation, helps stimulate and energize the body especially when fighting illness.

Lemongrass: Analgesic, digestive, helps relieve headaches.

Lime: High in Vitamin C, contains potassium, magnesium, iron. Antiseptic, helps sore throats, loosens mucus and stimulates lymphatic system, gall bladder and liver. Alkalizer (despite its acidic taste), destroys putrid bacteria in the mouth and gut, builds lung strength, encourages rebuilding of tissues.

Mushrooms: High mineral and vitamin content--particularly zinc, no sugar, general immune boosters, anti-cancerous, neutralize toxic buildup in the body.

*Onstad, Dianne. Whole Foods Companion (White River Junction, Vermont: Chelsea Green Publishing Company, 2004) selected pages 

Fettuccini with Goat Cheese, Bacon, and Fava Leaves

Monday, after a long day of climbing, we burst into the house, ravenous, and ready to eat just about anything in sight. I opened the fridge, hoping to see some feast I had brilliantly made in anticipation of this moment, only to be reminded that we desperately needed to go grocery shopping. Not even a jar of peanut butter to tide us over. We needed dinner and we needed it fast.

This pasta dish came together with what we had on hand: a package of bacon, a pound of brown rice pasta, some goat cheese, and an endless supply of tender, young fava leaves from our backyard. Fava leaves are a beautiful, silvery-green color and they have the same subtle, nutty flavor of the young fava bean. I have been eating them raw in salads with blood oranges (another obsession of late) and avocado, or throwing them in last minute to grain dishes and soups. The flavor has the same promise of spring as young pea shoots or the first slender stalks of asparagus.

If you don't have fava on hand you can easily substitute another green. Dandelion greens will add a nice bitter bite to the dish and sorrel will give it a lemony lift. If you are in a greens-deprived place, there is always delicious, reliable kale. The beauty of this pasta is the ease of the recipe and its potential for endless iterations with whatever you have on hand.

Fettuccini with Goat Cheese, Bacon & Fava Leaves

Serves 4 (or 2 SUPER hungry people)

1lb Brown Rice Fettuccini (or regular fettuccini)

1 medium sized yellow onion, chopped

4 or 5 pieces of thick cut bacon

4 oz chevre

3 large garlic cloves smashed with the back of a knife

4 cups fresh young fava leaves

salt and pepper

parmesan to top

Heat a large cast iron pan over medium heat. Add the bacon and cook until crispy, about 20 minutes. Remove the bacon and place on a paper towel-lined plate. If your bacon yielded a lot of fat you may want to drain off half of it to save for another use. Be sure to leave a good amount (at least 1/8 of a cup) in the pan. Once the bacon has cooled, chop into good sized chunks, about 1/2 an inch. 

Stir the garlic and onion into the bacon grease (careful for grease splatters!) and lower the heat a little. Add lots of fresh cracked black pepper and stir periodically. You want the onions to be soft and starting to brown by the time the pasta is finished cooking.

While the onions and garlic cook, bring a large pot of well salted water to a boil. Once boiling, add the pasta and stir. Cook until al dente. Reserve 1 cup of the pasta water then drain the pasta in a colander. 

Add the pasta, bacon and goat cheese to the pan of onions. Stir everything together, adding small amounts of the reserved pasta water at a time to help the sauce come together. Once everything is well mixed and the pasta evenly coated, remove from heat and stir in half of the fava leaves. Once the leaves are well mixed and wilted add the remainder of the leaves.

Serve immediately topped with fresh grated parmesan, cracked black pepper, and--if you are as citrus obsessed as I-lots of fresh lemon zest.

Gluten Free Beet Gnocchi with Cilantro-Walnut Pesto

I have always loved gnocchi. I like its plump little form, the toothsome nature of it, the way it draws a hearty ragu or a simple sauce or a delicate broth around it with equal success and delivers it all in one perfect bite. No cutting required. In most cases, when I love a food, I try to make it at home (carpaccio and ice cream being a couple exceptions that jump to mind.) Until recently, gnocchi was on that short list. I was intimidated by it, sure I would mess it up, and confident that a home version would fall so short of the ones expertly made in my favorite restaurants that I couldn't possibly enjoy it. Then I stumbled upon, of all things, a recipe for gluten free gnocchi made with beets as well as potato. The color of the final product was so stunning that I bookmarked the page and then forgot about it for a year. As I mentioned a few months ago, we take breaks from gluten from time to time.** I have been experimenting more with gluten free flours, trying to understand how they behave, and after pancakes, brownies, and cookies, I wanted to try something new, and savory. Pouring over blog posts old and new, I rediscovered this beautiful bookmarked post and decided to give it a whirl. I figured it would either taste good but look bad or look good and taste like an obvious gluten free impostor of something delicious. I invited my friend Lauren over to taste test.

I admit, I was surprised by the whole experience. The recipe was surprisingly easy and relatively quick to make. The result was a "pasta" with all the toothsome, sauce-carrying deliciousness of pure potato gnocchi, with the added benefit of being beautiful to look at and full of all the detoxifying power, vitamin C, Folic Acid and Potassium of beets. It was delicious. We had seconds. This is sure to be one of my staples from now on.

Note: I froze a few of the gnocchi and cooked them a few days later. The result was pink mush. Moral of the story, eat these fresh. They should be fine in the fridge for a day or two, uncooked, if you have more than you can eat the first day.

Gluten-Free Beet Gnocchi

adapted from La Tartine Gourmande

serves 4 as a main course or 6 as an appetizer

7 oz cooked, peeled beets (2 or 3 smallish beets)

14 oz peeled baking potatoes (2 medium sized potatoes)

1/3 cup quinoa flour plus more for dusting

1/3 cup potato starch

2 T corn starch

2 T almond flour

1 egg

1 T olive oil

salt and pepper

Cilantro-Walnut Pesto

1 cup raw walnuts

1 bunch cilantro

2 cloves garlic

zest of one small orange

zest of one small lemon

salt and pepper

olive oil

Peel and dice the potatoes. Place them in a pot of cold water and bring to a boil, "steaming" them until soft, about 15 minutes.

Boil the beets whole, skin on, in salted water with a little white vinegar added to help retain the color. When a fork goes easily through each beet (about 40 minutes), drain and run under cold water. Peel the skins away with your fingers. You can do this the day before and store the beets in the fridge.

With a potato ricer, mash the beets and the potatoes into a bowl and mix well. (My ricer broke after I did the potatoes so I ended up dicing the beets and then running them through the food processor until pureed which worked well). Once well combined, turn the veggie mash onto a board which has been lightly floured with quinoa flour.

Make a hole in the middle of the mash and crack the egg into the hole. Mix the egg into the mash with a fork or your fingers. Season well with salt and pepper. Add the almond flour, corn starch, potato starch and quinoa flour and mix well. Add more quinoa flour as needed. The dough should be a little wet but should hold together.

Divide the dough into 4 or 6 pieces. Working with one section at a time, roll each piece of dough into a long stick, about 1/2 an inch in diameter. Cut the stick at half inch intervals. You can leave the gnocchi as is, or, to get a nice pattern, roll each 1/2 inch piece along the tines of a fork before placing on a plate or wax paper-lined sheet tray. Repeat with each section of dough. 

Bring a large pot of well salted water to a boil. While you wait for the water to boil, make the pesto.

Place the garlic, walnuts and a pinch of salt in the bowl of a food processor and pulse until well combined. Add cilantro and citrus zests. With the food processor running, pour olive oil through the feed tube until the pesto reaches your desired consistency.

Once the water has boiled, cook the gnocchi in batches (no more than what would cover the bottom of the pot in a single layer) for just a few minutes. The gnocchi will rise to the surface when ready. Remove with a slotted spoon.

Top with Cilantro Walnut Pesto or sauce of choice, lots of fresh grated parmesan, and lots of fresh black pepper.

**In light of the current gluten-free craze, I have been reluctant to discuss it here or in person too much because, in my experience and in my opinion, no two people react quite the same way to gluten and I don't want to come across as endorsing one particular diet or another. Some people feel hale and hearty after a gluten-packed meal. Others feel bloated, cranky, head-achey, and even depressed. And a small percentage of the population has celiac disease which is a serious abnormal immune reaction to gluten. For those of you who have not been diagnosed with celiac disease but are curious about being gluten free, I suggest you experiment. Take note of how you feel right after, hours after and the day after a meal with gluten or a meal without it. Play around and remember that each meal you eat, no matter the composition, gives you more information about what your mouth likes, what your body's "machine" likes, and how you can find a way to feed both of them without leaving either feeling deprived.

I would love to hear about your experiences with gluten and/or gluten-free. And, as always, please feel free to ask me questions.

Happy Valentine's Day!!!

Favorite Pancakes & Fall Trips

November 1st!!! How did that happen so fast? In the past few weeks I've experienced the splendor of autumn (New England), an early taste of winter (Tahoe), and even a few searing, summer-like days here in Sonoma; a last hurrah before the much needed rain we got this week.

My trips have been a wonderful mix of the nostalgia-stirring and the brand spanking new.

The trip to Maine was a homecoming. Familiar, sentimental in an almost painful way. Even though it was October it smelled like every summer of my whole life: of wet pine, of moss, faintly of smoke and strongly of the sea. It smelled like capture the flag, blood drawn by a barnacle, mildewed rope bracelets, first kiss, first drunk, and lying on the lawn after dinner with my sister and my parents because the stars were too bright and too startlingly milky to ignore. And bed can always wait.

I have been to Tahoe a few times now and feel like I am only just beginning to understand its greatness. On our most recent trip we left Sonoma in the dark, at 6am, when it was already 60 degrees, and made it to Donner Summit by 9am to find thigh high snow, fog over Donner Lake, and that bright mountain sun already glaring against the white- a reminder that you have been thrust several thousand feet towards it in only a couple of hours.

 I have also, in recent weeks, found a favorite pancake recipe. Purists be warned! This is not your standard flapjack. But stay open minded if you are able. My pancake obsessed sweetheart has completely converted from his flour-based pancakes to these gluten-free, energy packed, and truly scrumptious stacks instead. 

Said sweetheart, Pete, is a rock climber, and thus, has chronic joint pain. When its particularly bad we try to eat an anti-inflammatory diet. For those of you new to this idea it basically means eating a mostly raw, plant-based diet, and cutting back on alcohol, meat, dairy, caffeine, sugar and gluten. I know. Even as I type the list I realize it sounds severe. But in reality, when we eat this way, it never feels abstemious. I love to cook (as you know), we both love to eat (those of you who know us can attest), and we want our food to taste good even when consuming with the specific intent to heal the body, or even fuel it.

After making this pancake recipe once I decided to make a quadruple batch of the dry ingredients to have the mix on hand all the time. I have since gone from being a once-every-couple-of-months pancake eater to a bi-weekly pancake eater. Very happily and healthily so.

The Pancakes

adapted from Sprouted Kitchen

1/3 cup almond meal *

1/3 cup oat flour **

1/3 cup quinoa flour

1 t baking powder

1/2 t baking soda

2 T sugar

pinch of fine grain salt

1 egg

1 cup almond milk (or milk or buttermilk)

coconut oil or butter for cooking

1 t vanilla (optional)

*You can make your own almond meal by grinding whole or slivered raw almonds in a food processor until very fine.

**You can make your own oat flour by grinding whole organic oats in a food processor until very fine.

Combine all the dry ingredients in a large bowl and mix well. 

In a small bowl lightly beat the egg, then add the cup of almond milk and the vanilla.

Add wet ingredients to the dry ingredients and stir to combine. 

In a cast iron or heavy bottomed pan, melt the coconut oil or butter over medium heat.  When the pan is ready add about 1/4 cup of the batter and repeat as desired without overcrowding. Personally, I like to limit it to 2 pancakes at a time so they are easy to flip.

When bubbles form on the top of the pancake, flip and cook another minute or so. When making larger batches for a crowd I pre-heat the oven to 250 degrees and keep the finished pancakes warming on a plate so everyone can eat at once. 

The options for toppings are endless. As documented in the photo above, I mixed some Maine maple syrup with whole milk yogurt and topped my pancakes with that and fresh figs picked from a tree up the street. We have also eaten them with homemade apple syrup from a friend. They are great with just a slab of high quality salted butter melted on top, or a scoop of your favorite nut butter if you are looking for enduring energy.

How do you like to eat them? Please let me know!

End of Summer Lasagna (no noodles): Zucchini Trilogy Part 3

Apologies for the delayed post. For whatever reason, this post about the medium sized zucchini was the hardest for me to decide on. I flipped through every cookbook I have and went into the archives of several blogs looking for inspiration. I considered making this inventive cobbler which I am still going to try, and I also considered some iteration of this but I have yet to buy a spiral slicer (next on my "to buy" list for the kitchen). I settled on pasta-less lasagna. The mornings and evenings have turned cold here and I find myself less drawn to chilled soups and salads for dinner. I want hot food but I still don't want the heavier pastas and stews of winter. This lasagna, using slabs of zucchini and eggplant in place of the noodles is a nice middle ground--hot, comforting, gooey with cheese but light and fresh and full of the summer garden harvest. I didn't include a recipe for the pesto here because I never really measure when I make it. Basically I throw salt, a clove or two of garlic, a raw nut of my choosing (walnuts this time) and big handfuls of herbs (basil & lemon balm in equal measure) into the food processor, hit "on", and pour good olive oil into the feed tube until I get the texture I want. From there I salt, pepper, and re-herb as needed. It requires, as most cooking does, the happy job of multiple taste tests.

Noodle-less Zucchini & Eggplant Lasagna

2 medium sized zucchini

1 medium eggplant

10-15oz whole milk ricotta

1 egg

zest of one lemon

parsley, thyme, oregano, mint or any other fresh herb you have on hand

red pepper flakes

pesto

olive oil

mozzarella and/or parmesan to top

Preheat oven to 400 degrees.

Slice the zucchini & eggplant lengthwise into 1/8-inch thick slices. Arrange in a single layer on your counter, cutting board or a sheet tray and drizzle lightly with olive oil. Sprinkle with salt.

In a bowl mix ricotta, lemon zest, egg, and chopped parsley, mint, oregano & thyme (or other herbs), and red pepper flakes until well combined. Salt and pepper to taste.

Lightly oil a lasagna pan and cover with a single layer of zucchini. Top the zucchini with a generous layer of the ricotta mixture.

Cover  the ricotta with a single layer of eggplant. Top the eggplant with a generous layer of pesto. Repeat the layering steps alternating zucchini, ricotta, eggplant, pesto until you reach just below the lip of the pan.

Sprinkle grated mozzarella and/or parmesan over the top and cover the pan with foil making sure the foil is not resting directly on top of the cheese.

Bake covered for 25-30 minutes. Uncover the lasagna and bake another 15 minutes until the cheese is melted and brown. Zucchini and eggplant should be fully cooked but, in my opinion, still a bit firm.

Let rest uncovered for 10 minutes, slice, share, enjoy.

Health benefits of lemon balm & basil

Lemon Balm
Lemon balm is antibacterial and has been used topically to dress and heal wounds for centuries. When ingested it is said to help with digestion, relieve nausea, and help with troubles of the liver, spleen, kidneys and bladder.

Basil
Basil is a member of the mint family. It helps stimulate appetite and digestion and it is a tonic for frazzled nerves. It is a natural breath freshener and can help counteract flatulence, constipation, nausea, and stomach cramps. It is a mild antibacterial and anti fungal so the leaves can be used topically to alleviate itching skin and insect bites.

Bonus: They are both delicious!!!