Summer Bounty

I've made a ton of stuff this summer with vegetables and fruit from my CSA, but I don't usually bake with vegetables:
So here are a few things from the summer that have gotten overlooked.

Pizza, this time with fresh arugula scattered on top:

Mustard greens sauteed with garlic and onion, served with italian sausage:

A garlic scape pesto, with pecorino cheese and pecans:

roasted beet salad, with plenty of goat cheese:

Potato salad with lots of fresh dill:

And a chicken from Awesome Farms, ready to be roasted with red skinned potatoes, onion and garlic:

Trio of Peach Pies

I had a lot of peaches in my kitchen this summer, thanks to my CSA:
And believe it or not, I had never made a peach pie before this summer, so I decided to try out a few recipes.

The first recipe I tried was for a peach custard pie. I mixed up a custard of egg yolk, sour cream and sugar:

Whisked it all together and poured it over sliced peaches:
That pie also had a very sweet crumb topping. I'll make that one again when I'm having a VERY strong sugar craving.

The next pie I made was a bit simpler - just sliced peaches mixed with a bit of sugar and spice, arranged over a crust of crushed gingersnaps mixed with butter:
I brushed a bit of warm apricot jam over that one for a bit of shine so it would look finished after I took it out of the tart pan.

Finally, I took on a plain peach pie. I sliced my peaches and mixed them with sugar, cornstarch and a bit of flour:

And once they were topped with crust, baked them into a classic!

Rustic Apricot Peach Tart

The CSA bounty this summer included plenty of delicious fresh apricots:

I hadn't had anything but dried apricots for a long time, and really enjoyed the fresh fruit in hand, but when faced with a pint basket full that wouldn't last, I did what any reasonable baker would do and whipped up a crust:

Because I was making a free-form rustic tart, I cracked an egg yolk into a measuring cup and added water to come to about a 1/4 cup instead of just using cold water. The egg makes for a much sturdier crust:

After the dough chilled I rolled in out between sheets of waxed paper to keep my counter clean:

I then spread the crust with a mix of sweetened cream cheese and started topping it with chopped nuts and my apricots:

I added the peaches on top and glazed the result with a bit of warmed jam for shine:

And it baked into something almost like a fruit pizza:
This recipe was based on this one, but I used the homemade crust above, pecans, and added a few chunks of peach.

Blueberry Cornmeal Muffins

I woke up on a weekend morning with some CSA blueberries in my fridge, and a desire to make something a little different - I decided on these blueberry cornmeal muffins:

The recipe pairs a little crunch of cornmeal with sweet berries - perfect for midsummer:

As with all quickbreads, this came together quickly - mix wet and dry ingredients, throw in berries...

scoop into muffin tins lined with papers...

and twenty minutes or so later, fresh breakfast!

Zucchini Chocolate Chip Cookies

I still hate zucchini, so I shredded some more to add to a new recipe - cookies!

I had read about this recipe a few years ago when my mother bought me a copy of "Animal Vegetable Miracle." The recipe is similar to your average chocolate chip cookie, though it uses a bit of honey instead of all sugar, which makes it a bit easier to cream:

And, of course, you add a bunch of grated zucchini to the mix once your flour is incorporated:

After adding a good dose of chocolate chips and scooping them onto cookie sheets:

They baked into soft, cake-like (healthy!) cookies:

Zucchini Bread

I really hate zucchini, even beautiful zucchini like these I got from my CSA:
The solution to this pile of beautiful vegetables, for me, is zucchini bread! I use a recipe my mom got many years ago from a farm a few blocks from where I grew up in Connecticut.

Zucchini Bread is quite simple to put together. You first blend together wet ingredients, here, oil, sugar, eggs and vanilla:

And then you measure out grated zucchini and nuts:

And mix those in after adding flour, leavening and spices:

The finished product is one of my favorite quickbreads - a far cry from a hated vegetable!

Sour Cherry Buttermilk Cake

Last weekend I got some beautiful sour cherries in the fruit share from my CSA:
I had seen this post, a raspberry buttermilk cake from the June issue of Gourmet, and decided that it would be the perfect recipe to adapt to sour cherries, and I had just enough fruit for the cake.

My first step was the pit my cherries. My favorite local cookware shop was out of cherry pitters, but they gave me some great advice - a piping tip will work just as well! I used my #4 Ateco:

Then, on to the cake. This was a straightforward creaming of butter, sugar, eggs following by alternating additions of flour and buttermilk:

Once the batter was done I poured it into a single cake pan, dotted the top with chopped cherries and sprinkled the cherries with sugar:

And after a quick 25 minutes in the oven, yum!

*any vegans out there can check out a great vegan adaptation of this recipe here.

Challah with Fresh Eggs from the Farm!

Happy Chickens make delicious eggs:

These delicious eggs, available at the greenmarket in New York City's Union Square from Tello's Green Farm, also make delicious Challah:
I split a dozen of these eggs with a friend every week as part of a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) program. In these programs, groups pay a farmer up front for a share of the season's harvest so that the farmer has the resources to buy seed, machinery and whatever else they may need to keep the farm running. We also get a share of vegetables and in a few weeks, fruit!

The dough made of these eggs seemed a little brighter yellow to me than the dough of previous Challah I've made:

Once it was kneaded, I set it to rise:

And a few hours later, it was ready for shaping:

I split the dough into four portions this time...

to make a four-braid. Even when I've made a recipe before, it is fun to try something new with it:

The resulting rich bread benefited greatly from the fresh eggs!