Category Archives: summer

Blueberry & Golden Plum Pie + A Giveaway!

8 August 2015 by local kitchen

This post is in partnership with MightyNest, the online retailer with a positive mission: providing the natural, organic, and non-toxic products that families seek for their homes while also giving back to schools. MightyNest is sponsoring the giveaway and provided a set of the materials to me for use in this post. This recipe started out as a cherry pie. An open-faced, glazed cherry pie, in fact. To which I added some lovely little golden plums of the I-can’t-resist variety […]

Categories: baking, berries, dessert, pastry, pie, plums, summer, whole wheat flour • Tags: baking, berries, cooking, dessert, food, local, recipes

Cucumber & Fennel Salad with Cuban Oregano

17 July 2015 by local kitchen

Do you remember that funky Cuban oregano plant I picked up a couple of months ago? The crazy I’m-an-herb-but-also-a-succulent plant? Well, it’s been growing like gangbusters in this New York summer of plenty of sun and lots of rain. I’ve been sort of loathe to touch it: with my black thumb, if a plant is doing well, I find it’s best to just sit back and stay out of its way. But I finally broke down, trimmed a couple of stems, […]

Categories: cucumber, fennel, herbs, oregano, salad, summer, vegetarian • Tags: cooking, food, local, quick & easy, recipes, salad

Simple Strawberry Skillet Jam

29 June 2015 by local kitchen

It’s that time of year again: the time when I’m buying an armful of rhubarb, or a flat of berries, or pound after pound of peaches, and some innocent, unsuspecting stranger asks brightly, “What are you going to make?” The reactions I get when I tell people that I make jam run the full gamut from Stewie to serious side eye to the Patrick Stewart quadruple take. At the farmer’s market last summer, one woman even told me, “Girl, ain’t nobody […]

Categories: berries, preserving, summer • Tags: berries, food, local, recipes, summer

Blueberry Meyer Lemon Cake

8 May 2015 by local kitchen

See that cake up there? That was my breakfast. No one, including me, should try to tell you that cake is a nutritious option for breakfast – there is plenty of butter and sugar in there, after all, and those two aren’t exactly nutrient dense. Strangely enough, however, despite my rather non-nutritionally-stellar breakfast, I haven’t “crashed” this afternoon (fiber in whole grains delays absorption of simple carbohydrates and prevents spikes in insulin), I have managed to perform complex mathematical equations […]

Categories: baking, berries, breakfast, cake, citrus, dessert, snack, spring, summer, whole wheat flour • Tags: baking, cake, cooking, food, local, quick & easy, recipes

Mirepoix, Sofrito, & Soup Base for the Freezer

16 October 2014 by local kitchen

Have you ever noticed how each season’s preserving takes on a life of its own? Sure, you have the standards that you put up every year: canned tomatoes, your husband’s favorite pickle, ears and ears of frozen grilled corn. But each season it seems a certain method of preservation wins the day. Either the canning pot is bubbling away non-stop, or you have six different crocks fermenting on the counter, or everything in sight gets spread out in the dehydrator. […]

Categories: 100% local, freezing, preserving, soup, spring, summer • Tags: cooking, food, local, preserving, recipes

Nectarine Plum Butter

16 September 2014 by local kitchen

I have a confession to make: this fruit butter sat on my stove, in the Staub, for three days before I managed to cook it fully down and get it into jars. My friend Tanya had pointed me to a recent article on the Kitchn about when a health inspector visited Faith’s kitchen, and I had to laugh: I had a sponge near the sink, half an apple that had been sitting on my cutting board for hours, and a […]

Categories: canning, fall, peaches, plums, preserving, spreads, summer • Tags: canning, cooking, food, local, preserving

Roasted Heirloom Tomato Sauce

10 September 2014 by local kitchen

And the tomato recipes go rolling, rolling, rolling on. Last week I picked up a bushel of organic paste tomatoes from Fishkill Farms; at the same time, I got 20 lbs of heirloom paste tomatoes, a gorgeous red-and-yellow-stripey varietal with a deep magenta flesh, few seeds, and fantastic flavor. (I also grabbed some orchard nectarines, heirloom baby orange sweet peppers, NY maple syrup, and Flying Pigs‘ hot Italian sausage. Fishkill has a great year-round farm market, full of all sorts […]

Categories: canning, preserving, sauces, summer, tomatoes • Tags: canning, cooking, food, local, preserving, summer, tomatoes

Curried Yellow Tomato Chutney

7 September 2014 by local kitchen

Rarely do I meet a chutney that I do not like. Which is strange, because chutney is basically a pickle and I hate pickles. Hmmm. The exception that proves the rule, perhaps? At any rate, this chutney – this chutney with its adorable, tiny, yellow peach tomatoes, its subtle hint of sweetness, its lightly curried Indian flavors and just enough heat on the finish – this chutney is no exception. It’s simply lovely. I have to give it up for […]

Categories: chutneys, summer, tomatoes • Tags: canning, cooking, food, local, preserving, recipes, tomatoes

Garden-Busting Roasted Tomato Sauce

24 August 2014 by local kitchen

Is the garden erupting with end-of-summer bounty? Are the piles of CSA vegetables taking over your fridge and kitchen counters? Are you feeling as lazy about canning as I am this summer? Well then, you’re in luck! This easy-peasy roasted vegetable tomato sauce solves all those problems and more, in addition to the perennial question, “What’s for dinner?” While I am slowly (oh-so-slowly) surfacing from my post-World Cup funk (two loonnnnggg years before qualifying for 2018 starts), I can’t quite […]

Categories: 100% local, preserving, sauces, summer, tomatoes • Tags: cooking, local, preserving, recipes, summer, tomatoes

Green Bean, Corn & Bacon Salad with a Chipotle-Lime Dressing

21 August 2014 by local kitchen

I’m sometimes at a loss when it comes to green beans. I mean, sure: when I’ve got a handful or two, the way I will buy them at the farmer’s market, I’ll toss them into a curry or noodle dish, no problem. But often it seems, when beans are ready, they are READY: the harvest comes fast & furious, and we end up with two bulging gallon Ziplocs in the fridge, courtesy of the CSA (and of me avoiding green […]

Categories: corn, green beans, quick & easy, salad, summer • Tags: cooking, food, local, quick & easy, recipes, salad

Fattoush

17 August 2014 by local kitchen

Fattoush. Fattoush. Fattoush. It’s just fun to say, no? Traditionally, fattoush is a Lebanese mezze, a salad composed of tomatoes and cucumbers, often radishes and green peppers, and some form of greens, usually purslane. It was also a type of Middle Eastern panzanella: a way to use up day-old stale pita bread, which was fried into crispy croutons and then tossed with a fragrant salad, flavored with the distinctive sour note of a sumac, lemon & olive oil dressing. In […]

Categories: arugula, cucumber, mint, parsley, salad, summer, tomatoes, vegetarian • Tags: cooking, food, local, recipes, salad, summer

Plum Jam with Preserved Lemon

6 October 2013 by local kitchen

Plums always remind me of my dad. He would eat them by bucketful in summer: if I think of him in summertime, I see a plum in his hand, one missing a great big Dad-sized bite. I sometimes wonder what he would think of this wacky preserving-canning creature I’ve become. He died many years ago, when I was just out of college and still finding my way in the world. I started cooking as a teenager, so I’m sure I […]

Categories: canning, fall, jams, plums, preserving, summer • Tags: canning, cooking, food, local, preserving, recipes

Nectarine Meyer Lemon Butter

29 September 2013 by local kitchen

As promised, the nectarine Meyer lemon butter recipe. It’s a simple one: a nice pile of nectarines from the farmer’s market, a bit (a very little bit) of sugar, and two precious Meyer lemons, hoarded from my visit to Karen in August. This has become my preferred method for fruit butters: coarsely chop unpeeled fruit and soften at a low simmer until you can push it through a food mill; strain the juice from the pulp and reduce the juice […]

Categories: canning, citrus, fall, peaches, preserving, sauces, summer • Tags: canning, cooking, food, local, preserving, recipes

Plum Pie Filling

21 September 2013 by local kitchen

Pie filling: some of the easiest preserving you’ll do, and my go-to when I have a lot of fruit that I need to put up in a hurry. Pie fillings are great because you don’t have to achieve a gel, so there are no limits on how much (or little) sugar you can add, how long you cook it for, whether you want to toss in some booze or juice or a bit of fancy flavored vinegar. You can simply […]

Categories: canning, fall, plums, preserves, preserving, summer • Tags: canning, cooking, food, local, pie, preserving, recipes

Sriracha-Pickled Eggplant & Summer Squash

15 September 2013 by local kitchen

It’s been an easy eggplant year: we’ve only gotten a few pounds in the CSA this season, scattered over the last several weeks. After last year’s Eggplantocalypse, I’m grateful, especially with all of the traveling I’ve done this summer (although I have some friends who will lament the loss of quarts & quarts of eggplant bacon). Since Tai won’t eat it, and eggplant is not my favorite either, it’s a struggle to use it up when we get loads, but this […]

Categories: 100% local, canning, eggplant, pickles, preserving, summer, zucchini • Tags: canning, cooking, food, local, preserving, quick & easy, recipes