Scorpacciata

scorpacciata (noun, Italian)

eating copious amounts of a food in its peak local season

I'm indebted to Brian Halweil, editor of Edible East End, for this wonderful Italian word. I began writing the Scorpacciata column for the weekly newsletter of my Real Food Market. I like to let people know how easy it is to eat seasonally, how little planning and recipe-hunting and cooking is required for the typical dinner for family or friends. I once had a boyfriend who announced, as if it were a little shocking, 'You spend more time shopping than cooking!' I suppose I do, in that I spend a fair amount of time finding my sources, and a fair amount of time at the market, and I favor quick methods once I get home. On a weeknight, anyway.

Here are some Scorpacciata highlights.

September 16, 2006: Tomatoes & Peppers

If you're not a canner (I'm not) now is the time to eat as many fresh tomatoes and red bell peppers as you possibly can. If you're bored of eating tomato salad with mild salad onions and vinaigrette every night (I never am - imagine, come November, how much I'll miss it!) here are ways to make the most of a surplus.

• Roast cherry tomatoes in a low oven (200 F) in a shallow dish with olive oil and large cloves of garlic. When they are soft and sweet, put them in a jar with olive oil and eat them on toast, pasta, in salads with feta cheese.

• Slice red peppers and roast them at 350 F in a large pan with lots of whole garlic cloves, well dressed with olive oil and generously salted with unrefined sea salt. When they are completely soft (but not black on the edges) let them cool. Puree the peppers and freeze. One or two cups of puree is a good size for most winter dishes: a red pepper sauce for fish or chicken; a dollop of red pepper sauce in a winter bean soup; with added milk or cream, a lovely bowl of soup.
  
  

September 23, 2006:Eggplant

September is ratatouille season. Think of the late-summer, almost-autumnal rich colors and flavors of the (sometimes deadly) Nightshade family: red tomatoes, orange peppers, deep purple eggplant, red onions.

These are some of my favorite vegetables. Ratatouille is easy to make. Just cut up and layer all these vegetables with some whole peeled garlic and plenty of olive oil and salt, and roast at 350 F until everything is completely soft. Top it with fresh basil. But unless you can it (and it cans well) it doesn't keep.

The other day I had eggplant to spare. (My mother brought it from Virginia by train.) It was starting to look a little well-traveled, so I split it in half, oiled the pan, and put it face down on a baking sheet for 30 minutes or so at 350 F, until it was completely soft.

I put the eggplant, skin and all (but no stems) in the food processor with olive oil, salt, garlic, a red onion, and tahini, and whipped it good. It took me a few days to finish this giant bowl of roasted eggplant puree.  I forget what else goes in baba ganouj - I didn't even look it up - but that's a rough approximation. When it's just me, I like to cook this way, and to pass it along to you, because it's pleasant and liberating and quick to make rapid use of a surplus without cookbooks or canning jars.

If you don't fancy the skin in your puree (but bear in mind, most of the vitamins are in and just beneath the skin) scoop out the eggplant flesh first. Leave a little on the skin, put it skin down on an oiled baking sheet, top it with a melting cheese, cumin, salt, and bake it 'til the cheese melts.

September 30, 2006: Cavolo Nero, aka Tuscan Kale

From now to early December is the time to make braised greens. Katchkie Farm sells a beautiful blue-black, densely reticulated Italian leaf called cavolo nero. The texture and flavor are wonderful and it's easy to cook.

• Simple Cavolo Nero with Garlic & Chillies

Chop off the ribs and hard stems. You can even make a V-shaped slice to take the firm rib out of the center of the leaf, which is perfectly tender. Chop the leaves and drop them in salted boiling water until tender. Tender is to your taste - I don't like them chewy, but when you overcook them some vibrancy is lost. Saute fresh or dried chilli pepper and garlic in a little olive oil. Toss the greens into the skillet and mix well. Dress and toss with more (cold) olive oil and salt to taste.

When I was little, the women who bought collards and other traditional southern greens from us at the farmers' market in NE Washington, DC would say, 'Are those greens frozen?' If I said no, they'd walk on by. We were mystified, and then we learned. Greens are, in fact, sweeter after a frost. Greens are mostly water; they fight to stay alive longer in cold weather by producing more sugar, which lowers the freezing temperature.

October 7, 2006: Radicchio & Other Bitter Greens

That rich ruby red ball is the bitter green loved by Italians. Bitter greens are one of my favorite foods - a grown-up lettuce - and packed with antioxidants. Slice open a curvy red orb and look at the swirls only nature can give you. Do you know Fibonacci, who described in mathematical terms the beauty of snail shells and other wonders of the natural world? I'll bet radicchio sworls follow Fibonacci patterns.

The way to eat bitter greens (radicchio, escarole, broad-leaved endive, dandelion) is either with strong flavors (Roquefort, Gorgonzola, bacon) or sweet ones (apples). Lately I sauteed escarole with apples and dried cranberries, and for my parents the other night, I made a radicchio salad with sweet toasted hazelnuts, sliced apples, and a vinaigrette of olive oil, sherry vinegar, and Red Jacket Fuji apple juice. Fujis were bred for the Japanese sweet tooth; that is one sweet apple juice.

I put a lightly poached (that is, still warm and runny) pastured egg on top of the greens (or should I say reds?). A salad just right for October. This winter (and you can buy local radicchio well past frost) sliced oranges, red onions, and black olives might be nice.  Yes, we do eat exotic produce - to me that means mangos and other produce not grown in this region - at my house. I'm not the Local Food Police. Here's where I buy whole oats, chocolate, coconut, oranges, and other foods I can't find around here.

October 14, 2006: Cherry Tomatoes & Cucumbers & Pork

What, no butternut squash soup? You can eat that all winter.

I'm stretching the scorpacciata concept this week, I admit. But I've realized that 'making the most of a surplus' (as I called it in my Farmers' Market Cookbook) is not very different from what I think of as 'last chance.' Eating a lot of cucumbers when they're peaking is a great habit. So is eating them for the few, final times in mid-October. You're going to miss them.

I had a pound of ground pork from Cayuga Fields with no plans. I had cherry tomatoes from Thanksgiving Farm with no plans. The tomatoes were fine, but they were mid-October tomatoes. I have eaten tens of thousands of cherry tomatoes, and these were a little past perfect. It's October; tomatoes are heat- and sun-lovers. They needed cooking.

There was basil my mother brought up from Virginia. It was slightly past pesto, with a  couple of brown spots. She brought lots of Tasty Greens - a superlative European-style cucumber, with thin skin and delicate flesh, we grow. They were not our most beautiful cukes - puny at one end (again, it's October) and already a week old.

The pork I put in a skillet with a little olive oil (pastured pork has plenty of nice fat, unlike lean industrial pork) cumin, and chili pepper. I put the cherry tomatoes in another skillet with butter, gently flattened/split them with my pestle, and closed the lid.

I like a raw salad at every meal.  The cukes I put past my viciously sharp, super-thin hand grater. So thin you could see through them, the cukes were were all but pickled ten minutes after I put olive oil and sherry vinegar on.

When the pork was brown, I added six or seven whole basil leaves and the now caramelly cherry tomatoes. Voila: a no-recipe, 20-minute, protein + two veg meal for the last weeks of pregnancy. Need the food, want to empty the fridge, can't bear to waste food, no time to cook. And leftovers: dinner for one and lunch for the next day.

Here's the point of last chance: if it's not peak season, but dwindling season, don't despair. There's usually a way to make the most of local food.

november: long-neck pumpkin & butternut squash

Today, a little explanation about winter squashes, which are now abundant at local markets. They typically come in just after frost, farmers pick them all by November, and they keep all winter, so you don't actually have to gorge on winter squashes as you would those fleeting crops that don't keep, like asparagus. They're creamy, dense, sweet, rich in beta carotene, and delicious with butter. Do add the butter. You need fats to absorb the beta carotene, which the body must convert to usable vitamin A. Butter is tasty - and good.

Which ones to eat? Not the ornamental pumpkins, which have thin, stringy flesh with little flavor. Only the seeds are worth eating. After you carve a jack-o-lantern, scoop out the seeds. Now wash, dry, salt, and toast them on a tray in a low oven until crispy. You can eat the shells if you like, or crack them open as a bird would.

As for good eating, the general rule is that the winter squashes with deeply-ribbed, star-shaped stems (think of when you slice a star-fruit, which has those deep ribs, and it makes a star shape in cross-section) are less tasty for eating and the ones with soft, round, knobbly stems have excellent flavor and texture. Star-shaped-stemmed squashes include ornamental pumpkins (think stringy and bland), delicata, and acorn squash (both, in my view, stringy and bland).

Soft round knobbly-stemmed squashes include buttercup (greenish-black, round and flat) and Hubbard (the giant gray one) - and many others. They have soft, creamy, dense flesh.

There is one glaring exception to this stem rule: butternut squash, that flesh-colored, slightly obscene one with the long, straight neck and bulb at the end. Though it has the tell-tale skinny, ribbed stem, it's actually the best eater, with great flavor and texture. I also think the roasted skins, with some flesh left on them, make superlative butternut squash stock for risotto and soup. Or salt them, put some melting cheese or even feta on them, and put them under the broiler for a few minutes.

Now, how can you remember that butternut is so good? Think Libby Libby Libby - the memorable label on the canned pumpkin every American uses for pumpkin pie. They certainly don't use adorable little jack-o-lantern pumpkins; they would taste terrible. Libby's is a butternut. Actually, it's called a 'long-neck pumpkin' and when you see one you'll know it straightaway. It looks just like a butternut but with a very long, curved neck.

Now you know how to make a non-canned, local pumpkin pie taste as good as Libby's (a remarkably consistent and high-quality commercial canned good): just bake and puree a butternut. Hubbard and buttercup would work too, but please don't bother with small 'sugar' or 'pie' pumpkins, or lesser winter squashes such as acorn.

I have cooked from Martha Stewart's Pies and Tarts, a wonderful book, since my early twenties; it was my second cookbook, after her equally wonderful Quick Cook Menus, both gifts from my then-boyfriend Steve Gritzan, now lead singer in a new country band I like, the Good Lord Willins'. The one blind spot in Pies and Tarts is the acorn squash pie - Stewart calls it the 'lightest' of the winter squash pies, but to me that's a confession of the utter blandness of acorn squash. I have similar doubts about the flavor of those cutie-pie 'sugar' pumpkins, but they may have got better in the last decade or so. If you think so, tell me.

november 10, 2006: Beets & Beet Greens

Last night we ate beets and beet greens, and I found myself saying to my mother, who is here looking after me and my new baby, Julian: I think I like beet greens even better than beets, if that's possible.

My favorite way to eat beets is cut in large chunks and roasted with olive oil, butter, and a gentle sort of herb, such as summer savory or thyme. Toss well with unrefined sea salt. I roast them in a hot oven (about 400 F) for the first 15 minutes or so, and then at 350 F until they are perfectly soft through. They are a bit shrivelly and caramelized on the outside, smooth and soft inside.

Last night we ate beets my second favorite way. Mom cut the beets in chunks and boiled them in salted water, and when they were almost done, added the chopped stems and beet greens. When the greens and beets were both soft (I don't care much for al dente greens), she drained them and added plenty of olive oil, aged balasmic vinegar, and unrefined sea salt.

You can also steam them, to keep as many nutrients as possible, but that takes a long time. I prefer to add just enough water that it has all boiled off when the beets and greens are done. I even leave a little red beet-water in the pot before I dress them, because I like the dressing to be a little bit soupy and moist. The key flavor is the vinegar, which, with the sweet, earthy beets, makes it sort of sweet-and-sour. Too seldom do I buy good aged balsamic vinegar, but we had some on hand - it was a baby gift - and it is leagues better than the cheaper stuff.


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