Advice from an Italian grandmother

A LONG TIME AGO (decades, actually), the Italian grandma or nonna of my then-husband, Rick, gave me some cooking advice that I have never forgotten. So now it’s time to pass it on to you.

After you come home with your fresh vegetables from the store or market, she said, be sure to parboil them soon after (preferably the same day) so they stay green and crisp. This just means, have a good quantity of boiling salted water (don’t be sparing with the salt) and put your vegetables in just until they are crisp-tender. It’s helpful to have a bowl of ice water close by so you can plunge in the veggies before they get too soft. Then drain the water and store the vegetables in a bowl or container in the refrigerator, ready to use and eat.

The method makes vegetables last longer than uncooked ones in your fridge, so there’s less waste — no cutting off brown or rotten parts. When it’s time to eat them, you can just heat them up very quickly any way you like. Don’t overcook. Rick’s nonna liked to saute the parboiled broccoli in olive oil with some garlic and cayenne pepper.

I confess I have followed this advice only haphazardly over the years, but in the last year, after I decided to really commit to this practice, my parboil record really improved (hmmm, I’ve never used the phrase “parboil record” before).

As a great benefit, the vegetables look so inviting, that I’m sure I eat more of them. I like both the broccoli and the green beans, whether hot or cold, simply dressed with  lemon juice and salt.

It’s a great tip from a wise nonna. Now all you have to do is follow it.

For more on Rick’s nonna’s cooking advice see “Meatballs of Love,” (published in Salon 20 years ago!)

Whatever. . .

WHATEVER IS FRESH  — from your garden or your neighbor’s garden, from a farmers’ market,  fruit-and-vegetable stand, u-pick farm or along a path, growing edible and wild — well, that’s what you should be eating right now.

For me, the vegetables and herbs lately include tender carrots and stringbeans (green or yellow), tiny new potatoes, nice little cauliflowers, fresh garlic, cherry tomatoes, basil, parsley, tarragon and mint. And summer fruit: Bluecrop blueberries that I picked at a wonderful organic blueberry farm (Yes, I may have to make the seasonal favored coffeecake, Blueberry Boy Bait ), blackberries from the bushes that grow wild here, and melons — watermelon, cantaloupe, honeydew — from a produce stand.

My July salad: tiny potatoes, green and yellow stringbeans, carrots, cherry tomatoes and green onions in a mustard-vinaigrette

What to do with them? Well, it’s a theme I keep coming back to — salad. It doesn’t require much cooking, and it’s perfect for summer eating — lunch, dinner, picnics, road trips, snacks. . .

Here are a couple of my favorite previous posts about summer salad, for more ideas:

Salads, salads salads

Summer’s salad days

A Valentine vegetable

Have you ever noticed that out-of-season produce such as asparagus and strawberries are popular choices for Valentine’s Day dinners?

What’s wrong with a good winter root vegetable with a deep garnet color and a heart-like shape? Yes, of course, I am talking about our humble friend, the beetroot.

Its cultivated form, says the Oxford Companion to Food (on whose cover is a photo of beetroot), is descended from the sea beet, B. maritima, that grows wild around the Mediterranean and Atlantic coasts of Europe and N. Africa.  There are various forms and colors, but the red beet, with purple and yellow pigments combining to produce its strong scarlet color, was embraced soon after its introduction to England in the 17th century. Its juice is often used as a natural food coloring.

French and Italian chefs cut the beets into interesting shapes and figures for their salads.

That reminds me that my sister Milly once made a beet borscht for Valentine’s Day, cutting all the beets into heart shapes.

Though heart-beets (pun intended) were too much trouble for me — and even Milly noted that she did that only once, long ago — I did think a beet salad would be nice around Valentine’s Day — a salad described quite fittingly in 1699 as “a grateful winter Sallet.”

The salad I made is a classic combo: cooked cut beets are dressed with a vinaigrette and served atop greens with some toasted walnuts and a dollop or two of goat cheese.

Of course there are countless variations on this theme. I added orange zest and a little fresh orange juice in addition to the oil, balsamic vinegar, salt and pepper, but a dressing made with lemon zest and juice would certainly be just as nice.  You could serve it warm and serve on gently cooked beet greens. You could use hazelnuts in place of walnuts, feta cheese instead of goat cheese. Or omit the cheese altogether, and add some segments of orange or mandarin….

About cooking beets: I wrapped them in aluminum foil, put them on a baking sheet and baked them at 350 degrees for a long while –about an hour — but I’ve  read of a quick method for those with microwave ovens: simply put a few beets in a covered microwave dish and cook until tender, about 5 minutes.

In both cases, rinse the beets under cool water and slip off their skins (which will temporarily stain your fingers pink) before cutting into wedges, slices, matchsticks, or whatever shapes strike your fancy. Even hearts.

I did cut one heart-beet for this quick little print

After your grateful winter beetroot salad, there will still be plenty of room for dessert.

A happy Valentine’s Day to all of you!

An autumn appreciation

I shook off the melancholy of summer’s ending last week with a drive over the mountains to Cashmere and a wonderful time spent with Aviva, both in the kitchen and outdoors. We baked three types of lemon pie and invited friends for a sampling.

Before I left, friends gave me some Bartlett pears, Jonathan apples, cucumbers and tomatoes — and on the way home, I stopped to buy a rustic loaf of German rye from a bakery in Leavenworth, and corn and potatoes sold from the back of a truck.

The leaves were just starting to turn on Steven’s Pass, and with my car piled up with gifts of the harvest, I realized my mood had turned as well. There’s a reason that our harvest festivals are seasons of thanks-giving.

Supper at home was really easy: cucumber salad, tomatoes with basil, corn on the cob (last of the season) and bread, along with delicious smoked wild salmon that Steve bought from our wonderful local fish store, Vis Seafoods.

Lately, one of my favorite meals is a simple beans-and-greens dish with garlic.  I was inspired to start cooking beans again by some very nice looking cannellini beans I found at  Conte di Savoia , an Italian grocery in Chicago. Yes, you could use canned beans, but trust me: these are better.

Beans and greens

The beans: You just soak the beans overnight in plenty of cold water; drain and put them in a large saucepan with fresh cold water to cover (and more), bring the water to a boil and then cook at a low boil for about 30 to 40 minutes or so, until they are tender but not mushy. Turn off the heat and then add some salt to taste.

The greens: Wash a bunch of greens — chard, kale, beet greens, or any other type–and leave some of the water clinging to the greens. Remove the stems, slice the greens into strips, then cut them in half.

The dish: Dice a few garlic cloves (as many as you like); heat some olive oil in a skillet, and fry the garlic until it’s golden and fragrant. Add the chopped greens, and saute until they are tender; then add some of the beans, with a little of their cooking water and cook, stirring the beans and greens together, until it’s hot and the greens are cooked as much as you like. Salt and pepper to taste, adding some red pepper and/or grated Parmesan, Romano or Pecorino cheese if you like. Serve with some crusty bread on the side. (You could also serve with grilled sausages, as Lidia Bastianich suggests with her version of this dish.)

More beans: Of course, if you have leftover beans, they can go in a tuna salad, a soup, or a tomato sauce to serve with pasta.  Or you could  just mash up some beans with lemon juice, olive oil and garlic, and serve as a dip.

Now, about that pie. It really isn’t lemon pie season, and I recommend that you make a dessert with late plums or peaches, or pears, apples, pumpkin–something in season–and wait till winter to make a lemon pie. But I was testing recipes for my book, and it just had to be done now. Fortunately, I had Aviva’s help, and help from the pie-sampling friends as well. Here’s how they looked:

Lemon meringue pie, French lemon tart, Shaker lemon pie

If you love lemons (and rich desserts–lemon desserts are deceptively rich and caloric), you’ll love the French  lemon tart recipe, and I have really easy methods for making both the tart dough and the lemon curd filling.  Shaker lemon pie, with the double crust, had nearly as many votes, and Aviva tried out a traditional pie crust recipe with egg and vinegar.

The lemon meringue pie tasted good; however, it was a stressful baking experience (too many steps, not to mention failures) and collapsed as soon as I cut into it.  I will be sure to remedy both these factors before posting a recipe for you–