Cook This: Yellow and White Summer Succotash

I never even knew that I liked succotash until I had it at the Homestead Restaurant in Oakland about a year ago. Prior to that, the turnoff for me was that succotash was made with lima beans, one of the few beans I've never taken a liking to. But Homestead made a delicious fresh succotash with white beans instead of lima beans and served it with a poached egg on top and a side of fried sourdough bread. Yummy!

So with all the great summer corn available (alas! not from my garden, which is too small to grow corn), it seems like a good time to take Homestead's version of succotash and give it a little bit of my own twist. I did that by making it a strictly yellow and white dish--white corn, yellow onion, white beans, yellow bell pepper, and of course a sunny poached egg on top. I kept the seasoning extremely simple (just salt and pepper) so the fresh corn taste doesn't get overwhelmed, but if you want it more seasoned you could add some thyme. Couldn't be easier and it makes a nice light summer meal for brunch or dinner.

Yellow and White Summer  Succotash

2 ears white corn (about 1 1/2 cups)
Olive oil
1/2  yellow onion, diced
1/2 cup diced yellow bell pepper
1 yellow squash (such as 'Yellow Eight Ball'), diced
White wine
1 15-oz. can white beans, drained and rinsed
Salt and fresh pepper to taste
4 eggs (1 egg per serving), poached (see Note)

Using a sharp knife and standing the ear of corn on its end, slice the corn kernels off of the cobs. Set aside.

Heat a large fry pan on medium heat. Add olive oil to the pan and saute the onion until translucent, stirring as needed to avoid burning. Add bell pepper and cook a minute or two before adding the squash. Add a splash of white wine and cover the pan for a couple minutes to steam. Add the corn. Cook another minute or two and then add the beans. Cook just until the beans are heated through and add salt and pepper to taste. Plate the succotash and top each serving with a poached egg and another dash of salt and pepper. Serve with warm or toasted bread on the side. Serves 4 generously.

Note: To poach an egg, bring a medium saucepan filled with water to a depth of about 3 inches to a simmer (so that you can see steam rising and tiny bubbles on the sides of the pan). Add 1 tablespoon of white vinegar. (You can poach an egg without vinegar, but the vinegar helps the egg white to set and hold together, which makes for a much better poached egg.) Crack and ease a raw egg into the simmering water. Gently nudge the egg around in the water a bit but be careful not to break the yolk. The timing depends entirely on how cooked you like your eggs, but 2 1/2 to 3 minutes in the water will give you an egg with the whites cooked through and the yolk still runny, which I think is just right. Scoop the egg out carefully with a slotted spoon, allowing as much water as possible to run off, then turn the egg out to drain onto a paper towel folded in quarters. Carefully turn the egg over onto the plated succotash.

And because I can't help myself, I'll leave you with this:



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Canning Applesauce from the Last of the Apple Harvest

The last dozen or so apples from my Fuji apple tree found their way into some yummy applesauce today. I sort of ad-libbed the recipe this time, but the result was great.

Last night I washed, cored and quartered 12 to 14 apples and put them in my 6-quart crockpot with 1 cup of apple juice, 1/2 cup of brown sugar, and 1 heaping teaspoon of cinnamon. I set it on Low and let it cook, covered, for 12 hours. This morning I turned off the heat and ran the cooked apple mixture through a food mill to remove the peels. (Don't peel the apples in advance--there's pectin in the peels that helps to thicken and flavor the applesauce.) The apple mixture was a little watery at that point so I put the apple mixture back in the crockpot, set it on High, and let it cook uncovered for another hour or so to thicken up. From this, I was able to get three and a half pints of canned applesauce.

I can't wait to try this applesauce alongside a pork chop or mixed into oatmeal. For just a couple hours of hands-on work, it will totally be worth it!

Fuji Apple Butter Crockpot Recipe

This is the first year that my Fuji apple tree has had a significant harvest, especially considering that the young tree is still not quite 6 feet tall. When I had picked over three dozen apples (and still left some small ones to develop more on the tree) I decided to do some canning and began looking for some good recipes. I decided to make apple butter, because it's tasty, fat-free, and easy--only six ingredients and it can be prepared in a crockpot. This recipe is adapted from the Rival Crock-Pot Cooking book that came with my crockpot many years ago. The only thing I changed was the variety of apple used.

Old-Fashioned Apple Butter

12 - 14 apples (the book suggested Jonathan or Winesap; I used Fuji)
2 cups apple juice (I used apple cider)
Sugar
Cinnamon (ground)
Allspice 
Cloves (ground)
(The book also listed an optional ingredient--1/2 cup sauterne--which I didn't use)

In addition, you will need a large crockpot and a food mill.

I used 14 Fuji apples of varying sizes. I washed, cored, and quartered them and put them in the crockpot, which I sprayed with a light coating of oil, along with 2 cups apple cider. I covered them and cooked on Low for 10 to 18 hours. (I cooked it overnight, 18 hours).

The next morning I ran the cooked apples through a food mill to remove the peels. (You don't want to remove the peel before cooking because there is a good amount of pectin in the peel that helps thicken the apple butter.) Measure the apple mixture and return it to the crockpot. I had 10 cups of cooked apples at this point. For every 2 cups of sieved, cooked apples, add 1 cup of sugar, 1 teaspoon of cinnamon, 1/2 teaspoon of allspice, and 1/2 teaspoon of cloves. So, for my 10 cups of apples, I added 5 cups of sugar, 5 teaspoons of cinnamon, and 2 1/2 teaspoons each of allspice and cloves.

Stir well, cover, and cook on High for 6 to 8 hours, stirring every couple of hours. After the first 3 hours of cooking, remove the cover so the juice will evaporate more and the fruit will cook down. The mixture will become dark brown and very thick. Spoon it into hot, sterilized jars and process using standard canning methods. I used a hot water bath to process, following the instructions here.

My yield from this batch was 8 half-pints.

I still have a couple dozen more apples sitting on my counter--I think I may have to dig up some more apple recipes!

Berry-Greens Smoothie Recipe

One of the things that I'm looking forward to making with the raspberries I'll be harvesting from the 'Raspberry Shortcake' plant I wrote about yesterday is smoothies. I love how easy smoothies are to make and what a good pick-me-up they are either first thing in the morning or for a late afternoon burst of energy. There are a lot of recipes out there now for green smoothies, which use spinach, kale or any other kind of leafy green to add more iron and other nutrients. Here's a concoction I've been playing around with that has a nice, bright flavor without a lot of ingredients.

Berry-Greens Smoothie

1 cup greens (spinach, kale, or other greens)
1 cup of frozen berries (raspberries, blackberries, blueberries or strawberries , or a mix)
1/2 cup green tea, brewed and cooled to room temperature or colder
2 ice cubes
Squeeze of fresh lime juice
2 heaping tablespoons of nonfat greek yogurt

Put all ingredients in a blender and puree completely. Serve immediately. (1 serving)

Just in Time for Easter: A Super-Easy Strawberry Dessert Recipe

I spent some time this week transplanting my everbearing strawberry plants. For the past three years I've had them in a bed surrounding what was a very young, small flowering cherry tree. Well, that tree is now a good 10 feet tall and it casts more shade on the bed than strawberry plants can take and keep producing. The bed has also become a favorite place for my dog to take a nap and I think that accounts for a number of the plants dying. So I dug up all the remaining plants, put most in a tall strawberry pot and the rest in a hanging basket. With any luck they'll start fruiting by May.


All these strawberry thoughts brought to mind a strawberry dessert I tasted a couple years ago when I was out wine-tasting in the Livermore Valley. The Amphora Nueva company had samples of their olive oils and vinegars to taste and they also had a simple dessert made with fresh strawberries, angel food cake, slivered almonds, and maple balsamic vinegar. It was delicious. The following recipe has only a couple changes, such as using pomegranate balsamic vinegar (which is easier to find) instead of maple, and adding a topping. The measurements are very approximate because this is something you can really just throw together to taste. It's soooooo easy and very yummy. Enjoy!

Strawberry-Angel Food Dessert

2 lbs. fresh strawberries, sliced
3 or 4 slices angel food cake, torn in bite-sized pieces
Pomegranate balsamic vinegar, approx. 1/4 cup
slivered almonds, approx. 1/2 cup
1/2 cup sour cream
1 tbsp. brown sugar

Put the sliced strawberries in a mixing bowl and sprinkle with 1 or 2 tbsps. of the vinegar. Let rest for about 10 minutes. Add the angel food cake bits and almonds and toss to combine. Sprinkle a little more vinegar over the mixture, but not so much that the cake pieces get soggy. Spoon into large wine glasses. Mix the sour cream and brown sugar and top each glass of the strawberry mixture with a dollop of the sweetened sour cream. Serves 5.

100-Ft. Diet Challenge--Meal #2

This is week 2 of the 100-ft. diet challenge and meal #2 was Pumpkin-Kale Soup with Mushrooms. I usually hesitate to make soup because, whether I follow a recipe or totally wing it, I never seem to get it right. But for the next few weeks, I'm going to be depending heavily on my reserve of homegrown pumpkins, and pumpkin soup seemed like an obvious thing to try. I looked through a lot of pumpkin soup recipes, but in the end I decided to adlib it. It came out with a rich, thick (but not too thick) broth that was really delicious. Here's the recipe:

Pumpkin-Kale Soup with Mushrooms

Homegrown ingredients:
1 small pumpkin (approx. 2 lbs.), peeled, seed and cut in chunks.
1 1/2 cups chopped kale
4 small cloves garlic, minced

Purchased ingredients:
Butter
White wine (local)
1 c. crimini mushrooms, chopped (organic)
Olive oil (local)
1/2 small yellow onion, chopped (organic)
2 14.4-oz. cans chicken broth
1/4 tsp. thyme
sea salt
ground pepper

Melt butter in large saucepan, add chopped mushrooms and a splash of wine and saute a few minutes. Remove mushrooms and set aside. Add olive oil and saute onion and garlic. Add chopped kale and saute a couple minutes more. Add broth and bring to a boil. Add pumpkin and cook until tender. Add seasonings, then puree. Return to pan and add mushrooms and any liquid from the mushrooms. Simmer a couple more minutes and serve.

Read about last week's meal here.