Happy Autumnal Equinox

Today is the astronomical first day of fall in the northern hemisphere, where we reside and farm. It’s also called the autumnal equinox, because on this date, night and day are nearly exactly the same length (12 hours each) all over the world. The word equinox comes from two Latin words meaning “equal night.”

More specifically, the September equinox occurs at the moment the Sun crosses from the north heading south across the celestial equator, which is an imaginary line in the sky above the Earth’s equator. South of the equator, spring is arriving as the Sun heads their way.

This year that moment is 8:49 am EDT (that is, in our time zone). On any other day of the year, the Earth's axis also tilts a little away from or towards the Sun. But on the autumnal equinox (and on the vernal equinox in spring as well), the Earth's axis is straight up and down, neither leaning toward nor away from the Sun.

The Sun also rises due east on the equinox, and sets due west. If you’ve ever seen one of the ancient astronomical sites like Stonehenge, the woodhenge at Cahokia (shown in the photo), or the Serpent Mound east of Cincinnati, and you happened to watch the Sun rise or set for a few weeks leading up to an equinox, you’d see it gradually approaching one of the major markers.

So, if you think of it, check out where the Sun sets in relation to your house this evening (sunset is at 7:32 pm this evening) and you can reckon where due west is and use that reckoning to figure out the other cardinal points of the compass from your yard. You might even want to build your own woodhenge to keep track . . .

Of course, the autumnal equinox also signifies that colder weather is coming and the growing season will soon end. Not too soon, however; at the Enright CSA, autumn temperatures bring us tasty cool weather crops including greens and root vegetables. And we’ve already got some delicious winter squash coming in. Because of the CSA’s excellent farmers and their knowledge of seasonal growing, we’ll still be getting lots of great produce for seven or eight more weeks, if all goes well.

Zingy Pepper Soup

I’ve still got a lot of peppers left from last week’s share. Maybe you do, too. I thought I’d make some savory pepper soup; this cool weather is just right for a hot and spicy soup.

The recipe is from a cookbook titled The Vegetarian Epicure. A friend of ours gave it to us 29 years ago, solely because he was dating a girl who was a vegetarian at the time. He was gamely eating soy burgers, but I think he knew the food could be better, and he knew we grew a lot of vegetables in the backyard. He was probably angling for a dinner invitation with an appetizing eggplant entree. Maybe.

Anyway, the cookbook has served me well over the years, and this pepper soup recipe is one of my favorites. Use a mixture of sweet and hot peppers and it will still have that zing, without making you cry for mercy as your eyes water.

Pepper Soup
1 cup peppers, finely chopped
2 lbs. ripe tomatoes
1 onion, chopped
1/12 cups water
3 Tablespoons butter
3 Tablespoons flour
1 ½ tsp fresh grated lemon peel
Salt and black pepper
1 cup cooked brown rice
Sour cream
Fresh dill, parsley, or basil

Pick out an assortment of small and medium sized peppers—yellow, orange, red, and green, sweet and hot. The more hot peppers in the assortment, the more fiery the soup. You’ll need about 10 to 12 peppers. Wash them, cut them open, discard all the seeds and pulp, and chop the rest very fine (you can use a food processor). You should have 1 cup of finely chopped peppers.

Scaled the tomatoes and peel them. Chop the onion. Now, put all the vegetables, including the minced peppers, into the food processor and puree them. Transfer them to a pot, add the water, and simmer the mixture for about 20 minutes.

Melt the butter in a small saucepan and stir in the flour to make a roux. Cook it awhile, stirring all the time, and then pour in a little of the hot vegetable mixture. Whisk it to make a smooth sauce, then pour it back into the soup. Continue to stir and simmer the soup mixture for about 10 minutes.

Add the lemon peel, grind in the fresh black pepper, and add salt to taste. Stir in the cooked brown rice, heat through, and serve the soup garnished with a dollop of sour cream and some chopped herbs. Serves 4.

Time to Taste Some “Flavors of the Garden”

The Civic Garden Center is again sponsoring a special neighborhood gardens harvest sampler on Saturday, September 22 at the CGC. Called “Flavors of the Garden,” it follows their fall plant sale, and various community gardens will be represented, sharing some food made from what they’ve grown this season. “Flavors of the Garden” is from 4:00 pm to 6:00 pm at the Civic Garden Center, 2715 Reading Road, near Reading and Oak (just across from the old Bethesda Hospital, if you are looking for a landmark).

Enright CSA will again host a table showing off our harvest. Nancy Sullivan has volunteered to make an herbal wine cooler to serve that was a hit last year. She’s looking for donations of bottles of white wine to make the popular Basil Sangria. Bring bottles along with you to pickup Saturday morning if you’d like to help. And if you could prepare a dish using produce from our garden to share at this event, please contact Suellyn at suellyn7@yahoo.com.

This is not a potluck or a fundraiser! It’s just a free fun event to allow different community gardeners to get together and talk about how the growing season shaped up, as well as share a little of what they grew.

Sample sized portions of dishes from 15-20 different gardens are available to those who attend. There's also an opportunity to walk the paths in the CGC, peruse their library, and shop their small garden-oriented gift shop as well as network with foodies and garden people from all over the city. You can come even if you don't cook something, but we hope to have 2-3 dishes that will serve 20-30 small portions on offer.

Forecast Calls for More Corn, So Make Some Chowder

We’ll likely be getting some more corn in this week’s share, though probably not the dozens of ears we got last week. Hope you’re not bored with corn yet; it’s a delicious vegetable and ever so versatile. How many other vegetables can you make soup, bread, and pudding out of?

We’ve already had a corn pudding recipe, and you can make corn bread from your favorite recipe and just throw in some corn kernels. So, today let’s look at soup.
Chowder, actually, and this one even uses the cobs. It’s adapted from a recipe I found on SimplyRecipes.com.

Corn Chowder
1 Tablespoon butter
2 slices of bacon
1 yellow onion, chopped
1 stalk celery, chopped
4 ears of sweet corn, kernels removed from cobs (but keep the cobs, too)
3½ cups milk
1 medium-sized Yukon gold potato, peeled and diced
1 bell pepper (red or orange is good, but green is okay too)
1 teaspoon chopped basil
½ teaspoon sea salt
Ground pepper
Small bag of frozen cooked shrimp (optional)

Fry the bacon in your soup pot; take out the bacon strips and drain. Add the butter to the soup pot and then add the onion and sauté for about 4 or 5 minutes, until it is soft but not brown. Add the chopped celery and cook for another 4 or 5 minutes. Then break the corn cobs in half and add them to the saucepan. Add the milk and bring to a boil. Reduce the heat to a very low simmer, cover the pot, and cook for 30 minutes. Make sure the heat is as low as possible to prevent scalding the milk on the bottom of the pan.

Discard the cobs, turn up the heat again, and add the potatoes, chopped bell pepper, chopped basil, sea salt, and ground pepper to taste, bring to a simmer and reduce the heat to maintain a simmer for 15 minutes. Then raise the heat again, add the corn kernels and the optional shrimp (defrosted a bit by running water over them). Bring to a boil, reduce the heat, and simmer for 5 to 7 minutes, until corn is cooked and shrimp are heated through. Crumble the reserved bacon over the top of the soup, stir in, and serve.

I decided to add the shrimp after I made the chowder because the smell of the soup while it was cooking reminded me of a shrimp and corn chowder I had made in the past; I’m sure this would be perfectly delicious without the shrimp, too.

Very Varied Vegetable Gratin

I’m sure everyone has been enjoying their corn, but we got lots of other vegetables in the share last week, and with the eggplant, zucchini, peppers, and squash, I was thinking ratatouille. But when looking up recipes, I found a few for a vegetable gratin, and that sounded so good I made that instead. I used a little of one recipe, a little of another, and came up with this.

I made this for a potluck attended by a bunch of finicky musicians (okay, they aren’t finicky—they’ll eat anything, but they are quite honest about their reviews of what they eat), and they all went back for seconds. It was very well received, and I’ll definitely make it again and hope to get more than a few bites myself next time.

Vegetable Gratin
2 smallish eggplants, partially peeled (peel off strips, leaving skin every other strip)
1 small to medium zucchini
1 medium pattypan squash
1 red or purple pepper, seeded and sliced
1 onion, sliced thin
1 Tablespoon sugar
2 cloves garlic, chopped
12 roma tomatoes, sliced
½ cup mozzarella, shredded
¼ cup bread crumbs
¼ cup parmesan cheese
Olive oil
1 Tablespoon chopped fresh basil
Salt and pepper

Partially peel the eggplants and then slice into rounds about a half-inch thick. Cut the rounds into halves or quarters, so they are about bite size. Sprinkle the pieces with salt and arrange on rack for about 20 minutes.

Meanwhile, chop the garlic and slice the onion. Peel the zucchini, cut in rounds, and cut the rounds into halves or quarters. Cut the pattypan squash into bite-size pieces, too. Slice the tomatoes. Then put a little olive oil in a skillet and add the onion and sugar. Sauté the onion until soft, stirring so it doesn’t burn, about 5 minutes. Add the garlic and cook it for another 2 minutes or so. Add about four sliced tomatoes and cook for 2 or 3 more minutes.

Spread the onion/garlic/tomato mixture over the bottom of a baking dish (8” square or 7” x 11” casserole). Then add a little olive oil to the skillet and cook the eggplant pieces, about 4 minutes on each side. Remove the eggplant from heat and let cool a little.

In a large bowl, toss the zucchini, pattypan squash, pepper, and tomato slices with about a tablespoon or two of olive oil, the chopped basil, and salt and freshly ground pepper to taste. Then layer the eggplant and the other vegetables in the casserole on top of the onion mixture in the casserole.

Bake in a preheated 375-degree oven for 30 minutes, then take the casserole out and sprinkle with grated mozzarella, then bread crumbs, then parmesan cheese. Bake for another 15-20 minutes, until cheese is brown and bubbly.

Make Pudding Out of Some of That Corn

We got a lot of corn in the share this week. I mean a LOT of corn. Most people love corn on the cob, and this is some tasty stuff that lends itself to just boiling and eating. But variety is also the spice of life, so here’s something a little different, a great way to use up some of the corn from this week’s share from Nancy Sullivan. If you want a more savory version, add some pepper (sweet and piquante), and onion.

Fresh Corn Pudding
Ingredients
• 1/2 cup butter
• 2 eggs, beaten
• 2 teaspoons salt
• 2 tablespoons white sugar
• ground black pepper to taste
• 2 cups milk
• 3/4 cup all-purpose flour
• 2 cups fresh corn

Directions
1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Place butter in a 9x13 inch baking pan and set in oven to melt.
2. In a medium bowl, whisk together eggs, salt, sugar, pepper, milk and flour. When mixture is smooth, stir in corn. Remove pan from oven when butter is melted. Pour butter into corn mixture and stir well. Pour corn mixture into baking pan.
3. Bake in preheated oven for 1 hour or until set in center and golden brown on top.

Another alternative: I saw a recipe for a Thai corn pudding dessert (how did corn get to Thailand from the worlds of the Maya and Aztecs)? Keep the corn pudding sweet, without onion, etc. As soon as it comes out of the oven, top with coconut cream that you have heated with a little salt in a small saucepan.
—Nancy Sullivan

Electronica in the Kitchen

I got an iPod Touch a few months ago, and I like it a lot—I can take pictures with it, and if there’s an Internet connection around, and there usually is, I can check my email if I get bored while sitting in a bar listening to my husband and friends play music, Google song lyrics to make sure they are singing things right, read the New Yorker magazine in really little type, and even watch a very small screen episode of Star Trek. I can even get books from the library to read and get a map if I’m lost (which sometimes gets me more lost, but never mind that).

One thing I haven’t done with it yet is put any music on it, which seems strange to a lot of people. I just hate iTunes; it always gives me trouble. But that’s neither here nor there; one of my favorite uses of the iPod is what I wanted to talk about today—it’s an easy, portable cookbook.

I use it to access the Enright CSA blog to follow recipes posted there, and I also find lots of recipes online. Perhaps the oddest way I use it as a cookbook is to open the folder of recipes I have collected on my doddering old desktop computer, choose the recipe I want to make, attach it to an email, and send it to myself so I can open it up on my iPod, which takes up just a tiny amount of room on the counter or table where I’m working.

I could get out my binder of printouts of the recipes, sure, but I’ve never gotten round to alphabetizing or otherwise organizing them, so it’s always a search to find them. And with the iPod, I can immediately divide or multiply ingredient amounts to make more or less using Google, which even kindly translates cups to tablespoons and so forth. It’s a one-stop kitchen aid and cookbook.

So, yes, it’s an expensive electronic cookbook, if that’s all I choose to do with it. But someday I will put some music on it, and then I can listen to Harry Chapin or The Band while I cook. Meanwhile, I can watch Captain Kirk battle the forces of evil in the universe while waiting for my sauce to come to a boil. Now, that’s win-win.

Eggplant Extravaganza

As we conclude Eggplant Week, we've got a whole slew of recipes for eggplant, plus a link to a blog from a couple of years back about eggplant varieties. Take a look at this list to find out what kinds of eggplant we've been getting in our shares.

Last year we got a lot of eggplant, and we posted recipes for Eggplant Involtini (originally posted by Angie Utley), a recipe for Turkish-style Braised Eggplant from the New York Times, and a recipe for everybody's favorite Middle Eastern party dip, Baba Ganoush.

And here's one more eggplant recipe, for a nice Eggplant Creole Farcie (which means stuffed eggplant, essentially). So now you can try a different way of serving eggplant every day of the week!


Eggplant Creole Farcie

2 small eggplants
2 strips bacon
¼ cup minced onion
1 clove garlic, minced
½ cup minced green pepper
1 stalk celery, minced
2 tomatoes, skinned
Salt and pepper to taste
½ cup Asiago cheese, shredded

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Cut the eggplants in halves and scoop out the pulp, leaving a shell to fill (about 3/8” thick). Chop the pulp to small pieces.

Cut the bacon into small pieces and put it in a skillet; when starts to fry, add the onion, garlic, celery and pepper and cook until the bacon is crisp. Add the eggplant and the tomatoes. (To quickly skin a tomato, drop it in boiling water for 10 minutes. When it cools, the skin will slip off; cut out the stem core with a knife and it’s ready.)

Simmer until eggplant is tender and then beat the mixture with a fork until well blended. Season with salt and pepper and fill the eggplant shells with the mixture. Cover the tops of each with shredded Asiago cheese. Put a little water in the bottom of a pan with a rack and place the eggplant on the rack. Cook about 30 minutes, until shells are thoroughly heated.

Depending on the size of the eggplants, makes 2-4 servings.

Eggplant for Breakfast!

Last season, I noted that there were times when a meal without greens was breakfast—maybe. And several people commented about ways they were enjoying greens in their breakfasts, in fact. Well, when the produce is rampant, you definitely have to get creative in the kitchen, and though I know those eggplant haters out there won’t be thrilled with this idea, I encourage all open-minded folks to give this one a try.

The idea came about by accident; I had some New Canaan Farm bottled peach sauce that was meant for basting a pork roast or roasted chicken. But I didn’t have any pork or chicken—I had a nice plump eggplant. So I basted the eggplant with the peach sauce, baked and broiled it, and it came out smelling wonderful and looking a bit like cinnamon rolls. Then we tasted it—delicious, and a nice complement to green bean salad for dinner—but it really seemed like it would make a great breakfast entrée.

If you don’t have any bottled peach sauce (I found it in a discount bin at the grocery), you can try apple butter or homemade-from-Schenk-pears pear butter as a topping. Even butter and brown sugar might be tasty. Experiment with all this great produce, and you never know what kinds of delicious treats you might discover.

Eggplant for Breakfast

1 eggplant, peeled and sliced into ½ inch rounds
Salt
Peach sauce, pear butter, apple butter, or brown sugar and butter

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Arrange the eggplant slices on a rack and sprinkle with a little salt to draw out the liquid. Let stand for 15-20 minutes, then arrange in a baking dish. Spoon sauce or butter of your choice over the eggplant slices and bake for 20-25 minutes. Then turn on the broiler and broil for 5 to 7 minutes, until the sauce starts to bubble. It sounds weird, but it’s really tasty. (Makes 2 servings with a medium-sized eggplant.)

Eggplant, Part II: 'Plant Burgers

You may have tried veggie burgers, but have you tasted a 'plant burger yet? This is a simple and delicious way to use up—er, I mean enjoy, really I do!—the eggplant as they start rolling in at the CSA

Take your eggplant, and without peeling, cut it into 1/2 thick slices, lengthwise or crosswise. If you want to eat these as burgers, round slices make sense, but you can also serve it without bread or buns, in which case lengthwise pieces, as pictured at left, are also good. Your choice.

Salt the eggplant lightly and let stand for about 15-20 minutes while you fire up the grill. Then, brush both sides of the eggplant slices with something that has olive oil in it--or just with olive oil. You can mix a little balsamic vinegar and some herbs in with the oil, or use your favorite marinade that has oil; the brushing ingredients are entirely up to you—feel free to experiment here.

Put those slices on the grill and grill for about 5 minutes, until grill marks start to show up. Flip and grill on the other side for 5 minutes. At the end, toast some buns, and serve the eggplant slices on toasted buns garnished with lettuce, onion, tomato, and homemade ketchup for sublime 'plant burgers.

Eggplant, Part I: Make a Cheese Pie with Eggplant

Today we have a guest blogger, Suellyn Shupe, who has the first of several eggplant recipes we'll feature this week, since those lovely purple and white globes have been in the share the last couple of weeks. Here's Suellyn's recipe . . .

I invited Nancy Sullivan to try this dish with me because I was determined to cook that gorgeous eggplant we got Saturday before it started to shrivel up. The recipe is from an excellent cookbook called Simply in Season which "was commissioned by the Mennonite Central Committee to promote the understanding of how the food choices we make affect our lives and the lives of those who produce the food." The cookbook is available from Ten Thousand Villages in O'Bryonville, among other places.

Eggplant Cheese Pie

4 1/2 c. Eggplant cut into half inch cubes
1 med. onion, chopped
2 cloves garlic, minced
In large fry pan, saute veggies in 1 1/2 Tbsp oil for 2 minutes. Cover and cook approximately 5 minutes, till eggplant is soft.

1 Tbsp chopped fresh oregano or 1 tsp dried
1 Tbsp chopped fresh basil or 1 tsp dried
Add herbs to pan and salt to taste.

1 small zucchini, sliced
Line bottom and sides of greased 10" pie pan with zucchini and spoon eggplant mixture on top.

2 cups fresh mozzarella cheese, shredded
2/3 cup evaporated milk
1 egg
Combine and pour over vegetables. Bake in preheated oven at 375 degrees for 30 minutes.

This took less than an hour to make. It says serves six, but it's quite light, and Nancy and I polished off more than half of it with a salad on the side. I would count on serving three or four if using as a main dish.

Note: I sort of hated to use evaporated milk, but I didn't know if I could substitute regular milk 1 to 1. It got a bit watery after baking, but it didn't really matter because there is no crust to get soggy. Quite an appealing looking and tasty dish.

Put a Little Vegetable in Your Dessert

Those melons we had in August were sweet and delicious, and we’ve gotten plenty of sweet corn in our shares this season, too, but sometimes it’s challenging to use everything we get at pickup, and how great would it be if some of the bounty could be made into dessert?

We’ve included some sweet treats in past blogs—for example, Zapple Cobbler, Zucchini Blondies, and Zucchini Pancakes. Hmm, there is a theme to these; zucchini turns up in sweet treats more than, say, cucumbers or turnips.

So . . . here’s another simple way to use up a little zucchini, though this recipe is the cookie equivalent of Stone Soup—it’s pretty much a regular chocolate chip cookie recipe with zucchini added. However, the zucchini keeps the cookies moist for days, and the extra flour added along with the zucchini means it makes a few dozen more cookies than a regular chocolate chip cookie recipe. Can’t beat that.

Chocolate Chip Zucchini Cookies

1 cup butter flavored Crisco*
1 cup granulated sugar
1 cup brown sugar, packed
2 eggs, beaten
2 teaspoons vanilla
4 cups all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking soda
2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon salt
2 cups grated zucchini (about 1 large or 2 small zucchinis)
1 package semi-sweet chocolate chips (12 oz.)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F and spray cookie sheets with cooking spray (or line with parchment paper.) Sift the flour, baking soda, cinnamon, and salt together and set aside. Cream the butter and sugar in a large bowl until light and fluffy. Mix in the eggs and vanilla. Add the flour mixture and zucchini alternately in thirds, stirring well after each addition.

Stir in the chocolate chips and then drop teaspoonsful of the dough on the greased cookie sheets, spacing well (about 2 inches between each mound of dough). Bake 14 to 18 minutes, or until golden brown (be careful not to overbake). Makes a lot—about 7 to 9 dozen cookies, depending on the size.

*You can use softened butter or margarine, but Crisco makes tastier cookies and recent research says that a little lard is good for you. Now, that’s my kind of research.