Sopa de elote y calabazín

Mexican chefs think of soup as an all-purpose instrument not just a winter thing. In fact, in the dog days of summer when nobody feels like eating, soups work better than heavier meals.

This dish is only going to work at the height of summer when corn and zucchini are at their very best.  It relies on the very best of ingredients and the chicken broth must be homemade not store bought.

Epazote is an herb that divides. It has a stinky smell analogous to asafoetida but once you love it, you won't be able to live without it. It is claimed to have the same anti-flatulent effect as asafoetida and it's heavily used with beans, corn, and most interestingly, zucchini!

This dish is complexly spiced in that Mexican way with chili peppers but it's emphatically not hot. It's very mild and soothing and absolutely phenomenal in this summer heat.

Ingredients

6 ears of corn (stripped into kernels)
2 small zucchini (diced into even cubes)

1 large onion (diced)

3 sprigs epazote

3 cups chicken broth (substitute by water)
3 cups water

salt
pepper

1 ancho chili
1 guajillo chili

"neutral" oil

1 lime quartered (to serve)
queso fresco (to serve)
crushed ancho chili (to serve)

Note 1: Since this is a summer dish, there were magnificent fresh onions in the market. This dish is a marvel with them. Use both the white parts and the green parts.

Note 2: Do not ignore the lime. This dish will not come "alive" until you squeeze it all over the soup.

Note 3: The reason to dilute the chicken broth is to make sure that the primary flavor is corn. In Mexico, they probably would go with straight chicken broth. However, the CC thinks that this tastes better.

Recipe

First roast the two chilis on a dried skillet until they are puffed and mildly charred on both sides. Let them cool. Slit them apart and remove the seeds and the stem. Set aside.

In a large pot, heat up some oil and toss in the onions and let them fry for 5 minutes at a medium-low heat. Toss in the chilis and the corn and stir-fry for 2 minutes. Add the salt and pepper.

Add the epazote and the broth and water. Bring to a boil. Turn the heat down to low and simmer for 20 minutes.

Pull the sprigs of epazote out. Don't worry too much if a few leaves fall off. That's part of the flavor.

With a hand-blender, blend the soup as fine as possible. You have two choices at this point. Strain the soup for an elegant product or leave it rustic.

The soup should take on a rust color because of the chili peppers.

Back in the pot, bring the mixture to a boil and add the diced zucchini and cook for about 8 minutes till they are cooked through.

Serve with the lime, the crumbled queso fresco and sprinkles of the crushed ancho chili.

Little House on the Prairie

Well, it's that time of the year again in the large city. 40 pounds of tomatoes all bubbling away on the stove into tomato sauce that will be preserved.

What's sauce for the summer is sauce for the winter, as they say.

Panha (Green Mango Drink)

In this insane heat, you need a drink to cool you down. This is a classic Indian drink found all along the West Coast of India.

The two spices added (cardamom, fennel) are quite cooling. The salt is needed to balance the sweet-sour taste and also to act as a restorative in the insanely hot summers when you're sweating out all that salt.

The recipe below basically makes a concentrate. You add ice and dilute the drink with some cold water and drink it. Even though it's not traditional the CC really loves to add seltzer water instead of ice water.

The saffron is non-negotiable. You need it for both the taste and the color. The drink should be this really beautiful yellowish-orange color.

Ingredients

2 raw mangoes (frozen is fine)
1 cup jaggery (substitute by brown sugar)

2 tbsp. cardamom
1 tbsp. fennel
1/2 tbsp. black salt

1 large pinch saffron

Recipe (Panha Pulp)

Note: Raw mangoes are found in the frozen section of most Indian stores.

Cut up the mangoes if you have fresh ones. Otherwise combine the frozen mangoes, the jaggery (or brown sugar) with some water and bring to a boil. Cook for about 12 minutes at medium heat until the mangoes are tender. (You'll only need about 6-7 minutes for the frozen ones).

Meanwhile, combine the cardamom, fennel and black salt and grind to a fine powder in a coffee grinder.

Take the mangoes off the heat and add the spices (including saffron) to it. Let it sit for about 2-3 minutes.

Put the mixture in a blender and blend really fine.

Pass the pulp through a fine sieve and store. This will easily last 2-3 weeks in your refrigerator. More if you freeze it.

Recipe (Panha)

Take 2-3 tbsp. of the panha pulp and combine with ice and cold water. Mix thoroughly and consume. You can add some more salt and/or sugar to taste.

Early Summer Zucchini-fest

Zucchini ribbon salad with radish, cherry-tomatoes, & pine nuts on a bed of shaved beets (rosemary & sage vinaigrette) ♦ Zucchini Soup with spring onions, white beans & beet greens ♦ Zucchini Gratin with thyme & Greek basil — Sautéed fiddlehead ferns

You Always Think It'll Happen To Other People

This summer, for the first time, the CC has finally OD'd on tomatoes!

Tomato Heaven

The CC's freezer is filled with homemade "tomato paste" and a large amount of "tomato sauce".

The house smells divine.

Some of the "tomato sauce" will be for present consumption. Some more might be made depending on the weather.

Bring it on, February!

Miso-Glazed Cod

This is one of the simplest recipes that the CC has ever provided. It's basically a "shake-n-bake" with fancier ingredients, and definitely what you want in summer time when it's too hot to cook.

The only caveat is that you must prep it a day before.

Prepare a small side-salad (also cold) and you have a simple summer meal.

Ingredients

2 cod fillets

1/3 cup sake
1/3 cup mirin
4 tbsp miso paste
2 tbsp sugar
1 tbsp soy sauce

Recipe

Mix the ingredients together to a paste, and let the cod fillets marinate in it overnight in the refrigerator. (The CC just puts them all in a plastic bag.)

Turn the broiler on. Broil the fillets for 4 minutes.

(If you like you can reduce the marinade in a skillet over high heat and pour over the broiled fillets. This "pan sauce" is amazing!)

Summer Sizzle

The city has gone from cold and rainy to muggy and stifling in the blink of an eye! Even eating is hard to do let alone contemplate slaving over a hot stove for hours.

In that spirit, here's a terrific recipe for a marinade for fish.

Two tablespoons white miso, 4 tbsp mirin, 1 tbsp soy sauce, 4 tbsp sake.

Marinade the fish.

Put in a broil-proof pan, add more of the marinade on top and broil for four minutes.

Serve with a cool salad.

Heat Quotient

Hotter than Brangelina fucking on a rickety tin terrace. Nine and half pounds of tomatoes - the lust, the lust!

Hiyashi Chūka

In the dog days of summer, there is pleasure in eating cold dishes. Nobody knows these more than the Japanese who have hot, humid summers.

The name gives away the origin of the dish. It quite literally means "Chilled Chinese". In Japan, you will see this dish on restaurant menus only in summer. In fact, its arrival suggests that summer is here.

It basically consists of cold noodles topped with cooled vegetables (of various kinds), other cold toppings like crab and shredded eggs covered with a Japanese version of a very light, sweet-salty, umami-laden "vinaigrette".

The noodles can be varied — popular ones include ramen, somen, even soba (which is what the CC used.)

The toppings are traditional too — cucumbers, carrots, thinly sliced Japanese-style omelette, crab sticks, tomatoes, negi, even various kinds of seaweed.

True to Japanese washoku style, the entire assembly requires some effort but it's entirely worth it when the weather is as hot and humid as it is now. It mostly consists of chopping stuff, and assembling it, and is very amenable to making in advance.

There is a free-form element to this dish so the "recipe" should be taken as a starting point not as "definitive". In fact, there's no such thing. Restaurants vie with each other to produce versions that attract clients but there's a core logic that must be respected.


Ingredients

1 cucumber (kyūri)
3 crab sticks
1 tomato
1 carrot
1 scallion (diced thinly at a steep angle)
2 eggs
1 tbsp mirin

noodles

1 cup dashi

Dressing
8 tbsp dashi
1 tbsp white sesame seeds
1 tbsp black sesame seeds
1 tbsp sesame oil

Recipe

Toast the sesame seeds. Mix with the ingredients for the dressing and set aside.

First make a very thin Japanese-style omelette with eggs, mirin and 1 tbsp of rice vinegar.

When cool, roll into a tight roll and slice very very thinly.

Dice the cucumbers, carrots and tomatoes into strips. Boil the crab sticks in the dashi, and when done, cut into thin strips.

Cool all of the above while you make the noodles. Dunk the noodles inside iced water to cool.

Assemble the lot and pour the dressing all over them.

Giuseppe Arcimboldo

Italian painter (1527-1593) best known for his paintings made entirely out of fruits, vegetables, flowers, fish, etc.

His most famous cycle is the one about the four seasons.

He was a favorite of the Surrealists for fairly obvious reasons.

Please note that there are no tomatoes in summer nor potatoes in winter since the produce of the New World had not yet made its way into common knowledge.

Frozen Vegetables

The CC pulled one of those ziploc bags out of the freezer. There was an incredulous sound made by one of the lesser species of the earth.

"What is that?"

"Frozen corn."

"But they're in a ziploc bag."

"???"

The CC was mystified. Had he entered the Twilight Zone?

"What brand are they?"

DOH! The invisible hand of idiocy smacked the CC's head with a powerful whack. The CC tapped his foot to gain his equilibrium (such as it is.)

"What do you think frozen vegetables are?"

"Ummmm .... vegetables that are frozen."

("Exactement, mon pauvre imbécile petite!)

"And who freezes the vegetables?"

This was the exact moment that enlightenment struck the ignorami with much more weight than the afore-mentioned invisible hand of idiocy.

Then the CC expounded at lyrical leisure (as he is wont to do.) Clearly, it made perfect economic and culinary sense to buy excellent summer vegetables (corn, peas) at dirt-cheap prices, and freeze them for future food-gasmic delight!

Lord, what fools these mortals be!

Summer Risotto

This is a glorious farewell-to-summer treat.

At the farmers' market, the tomatoes were glorious but nobody wanted any because "summer was over" - well, it's not - the CC is still blasting fans and the occasional air-conditioning. That's the problem with going by dates rather than weather. Things are not always quite so.

Anyway, a crazy number of tomatoes were bought, and logic necessitated that a last ta-ta to summer was in order.

This is riot of colors (as you can see below.) Oddly enough, it also happens to follow the traditional rules of the Japanese washoku.


Ingredients

6 pounds ripe summer tomatoes (yep! you heard that right)

1 small yellow squash
1 small zucchini

1 ear corn (if available.)
1 cup peas (freshly shelled)

1/4 cup green beans (cut into medium length)
1/4 cup purple beans (cut into medium length)
1/4 cup yellow beans (cut into medium length)
1/4 cup Italian flat beans (cut to resemble the above)

1 large red onion (diced very fine)
4 cloves garlic (diced very fine)
2 cups arborio rice (or carnaroli.)
purple basil (lots!!!, shredded by hand or snipped with scissors)

3 cups excellent white wine (1 cup for recipe, 2 cups to drink)

olive oil
salt
pepper
1/2 cup grated parmigiano-reggiano

Recipe

Bring a pot of water to boil. Dunk the tomatoes in batches for about 8 minutes each (depending on ripeness.) Pass the lot through a food mill to get a rich broth of tomatoes. You should have about 8-12 cups of tomato broth. (This is work. Deal!)

Bring the tomato broth to a slow boil. A lot of foam will rise to the surface. Skim, baby, skim.

Reduce the broth for about 45-60 minutes until it is "sticky" (Logic: this is the Maillard reaction with some caramelization taking place.) This is the "hard" part but since, it quite literally requires no work, it cannot really be called that.

Reconstitute with water to bring it back up to the original 8 cups.

Now, we prepare a standard risotto.

On a seperate burner, keep the above tomato broth at a low simmer. It doesn't have to literally simmer just that it needs to be on the hot side so as to not drop the temperature of the risotto when you dunk a ladleful in.

Fry the onions and the garlic at a medium-low heat for about 6 minutes. Add the beans, and fry for an additional 4 minutes. Add the zucchini and yellow squash and fry for an additional 4 minutes. Add the rice and fry till the rice is translucent and the kernel of the rice is visible (this is really obvious if you actually make this recipe as opposed to just reading this post.)

Add salt and pepper to taste. At this point, the CC adds a cup of white wine he's been drinking (read below!)

Add two ladles of the hot tomato broth, and stir. Keep stirring while it cooks. You are releasing the starch in this process. Ladles of broth and stir, ladles of broth and stir. Yes, this is fuckin' boring but deal with it. Have the afore-mentioned white wine.

Towards the end, add the corn and the peas (Logic: they cook really quickly, and you don't want them to turn into mush.)

Turn off the heat.

Add the grated parmigiano-reggiano (the mantecura), and the purple basil. Serve immediately with lots of black pepper.

"He's Not Mad, He's Merely Crazy ..."

"... and he's the Tomato Man!", said the farmer to his buddies at the crack of dawn.

Twenty pounds of tomatoes, half a pound of tomato paste, happiness next February!

(For the visually inclined.)

Summer Corn Chowder

Recipe: Corn Chowder.

This has a ton of basil instead of parsley, and is best served cold.

Pasta with Summer Tomato Sauce

Recipe: Simple Tomato Sauce.

The Cure for Depression

Twelve pounds of heirloom tomatoes from a record hot summer. Cheaper than a therapist!

Summer Corn Chowder

Ran into some terrific corn in Chinatown on the trip back from Boston, and decided to make a light evening meal of it.

Here's the recipe.

Farmers' Market Bounty Summer Menu

Zucchini Fritters with tzatziki
♥
Gazpacho
♥
Cherry Granita
♥
Penne con zucchini

Summer Corn Chowder

Corn chowder (recipe link)