Never ever let the seasonal overabundance go to waste. 

If you have an active garden, or a prolific fruit tree, you know this point in the season. You have solidly transitioned from being proud of your few edibles, to being amazed by the abundance, to being overwhelmed by the many pounds of food awaiting your preservation.

My “burden” this year is too many tomatoes; six varieties of heirloom have loved taking over what used to be the back lawn. We’ve sauced, we’ve frozen, we’ve dehydrated. The summer has been full of cucumber salads and squash curries, chocolate zucchini bundt cake for breakfast and chard with dinner.

Outside of my own garden, I have enjoyed the abundance of local orchards thanks to volunteering with the Portland Fruit Tree Project. From any given harvest party, half of the food will go to an emergency food pantry, with the remainder shared across all volunteers and the tree owner. It’s a satisfying, tangibly-productive way to spend an evening, and it’s delightful to bicycle home with two panniers bursting with delicious, ripe, food.

Complication: your bags are not filled with the shiny, perfect apples and pears you see in the produce section of the local grocery store. You’re probably not carrying the charismatic-looking Best of Farmer’s Market winner. In reality, you have real, local fruit, full of imperfections; a fungus on the skin or a bruise here and there. It might have an insect visitor – past, present, both.

It is incredibly delicious. And it is fall-off-the-tree ripe right now.

And you have 27 pounds of it.

And you have a household of two.

If you are faced with a similar “oppression” of abundance, get overly ambitious at the farmer’s market, or just decide that you want to make all of your “sparkle season” gifts this year – we have you covered.

This is less of a recipe than a general approach to the problem of “too much right now.” I’ve tried this with many varieties of apples and pears, and once or twice with plums. My last batch, the current house favorite, was Asian pears; the resulting product is smooth, rich, and incredibly sweet, like pear that has been stewed with vanilla beans.

Harvest Season Fruit Butter (or sauce)

Ingredients:

• An abundance of fruit of your choice (e.g. apples, pears)
• Large pot / pot large enough to hold fruit
• Water

Other:

• Canning jars or other containers
• Spoon
• Spatula
• Patience
• Optional: crock pot, food mill

Directions:

Clean fruit – wash and remove everything you don’t readily identify as “food.” (Insects and blemishes leave, I’ll let you make the call on bruises.) If you don’t have a food mill, skin and core fruit. Cut fruit into quarters, place in large sauce pot with a small amount of water on the bottom, an inch or so. Cover and cook over low heat, stirring occasionally so fruit doesn’t burn to the bottom of the pot. (Part of this stirring may involve fruit-mashing. Go with it.)

Eventually, the fruit will soften into a somewhat chunky sauce. If using a food mill, run the sauce through, stopping to clear mill of skins/seeds on occasion. If you are feeling cavalier, or lack food mill, break up remaining chunks of fruit with a spoon until you’re happy with the consistency. (If you really like chunky applesauce, quit early.)

You can stop here and preserve the sauce (can, freeze, or eat quickly). I tend to prefer fruit butters over sauces, for the richer flavor and better adherence to toast (and spoons).

To make a fruit butter, cook more liquid out of the sauce. You can do this in an uncovered crock pot or sauce pot on the stove; stir patiently to make sure it doesn’t burn to the bottom. I prefer to spread the sauce in 9″x13″ casserole dishes, turn the oven on low (150-200F), and go to bed. In the morning, stir and preserve the fruit butter, saving some for your toast topping.

Want more food inspiration? Check out the rest of our Sunday Recipe series. 

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Moroccan cooking inspired by the streets of Marrakesh.

The best tagine I have ever had is the one I cooked myself while attending a cooking class in Marrakesh, Morocco. It’s probably also the only proper tagine I have ever had. Raja (the cook), who really did most of the work that day, also led me carefully and demonstrated every step in how to make traditional Moroccan dishes such as salad, Berber bread and chocolate-layered semolina pancakes. I watched and learned. Smelled and ate. It was absolutely my best day in Marrakesh.

The day started at an indoor market in Mellah (one of the neighborhoods inside Medina) where I could pick meat and vegetables for the cooking lesson. The market had everything from meat (even live chickens), vegetables, bread and milk. We got some beef, carrots, zucchini, tomatoes, potatoes, chili and olives for the tagine and some apricots, eggs and dark chocolate for desert.

The salad we made was really simple and fresh. Just finely chopped onion, cucumber, yellow pepper and tomato. Seasoned with a splash of olive oil, salt and freshly chopped mint.

The beef tagine was cooked in traditional ceramic tagine cookware on low heat for about three hours. At the bottom we arranged onions, garlic and chopped fresh cilantro. The cookware was placed on the stove and the heat was set to low. The meat was placed on top and spices (ginger powder, cumin, paprika, salt and black pepper) were added at the edges around the meat. When the meat had been turned once, we arranged carrots, potatoes, zucchini, one whole chili, ½ lemon, olives and parsley on top. Lastly we poured in a mixture of both olive and sunflower oil. Before the tagine “hat” was placed on top, a little water was added. Now and again we scooped up the cooking liquid and poured it over the vegetables and meat. In this way all ingredients got a nice taste of the spices without moving them around.

The Semolina Berber Bread  we made was baked on top of the stove in a skillet. In Morocco, bread is  served with almost any meal during the day and a must when having tagine. Raja’s recipe used only semolina flour but I stumbled upon some breads in the city that seemed to have a mixture of semolina and wheat flour. Unfortunately they were not as nice. Our local deli (a hole in the wall) in Kasbah sold something that looked like a rye version of the bread.

The sweet dessert semolina pancakes were really the thing that won my heart and also something that was new to me. These pancakes should not be mistaken for the more well known pancake, begrhir. Begrhir is a yeast based semolina pancake that is often served for breakfast with honey. These pancakes are baked on only one side and the yeast create decorative holes on the surface. Raja’s dessert pancakes were sweeter and made with baking powder. They create similar decorative holes but are baked on both sides.

Below I have tried to translate Raja’s semolina pancake recipe as best I could. Raja used a typical Moroccan teacup when measuring the ingredients, so her cup measure was slightly less than a standard measuring cup. My recipe is as close as I could come!

Sweet Semolina Pancakes
Serves 2-4 people

One egg
½ cup sugar ( I used sucanut)
½ cup milk (+ more if batter is too thick)
¾ cup semolina
One teaspoon baking powder
¼  sunflower oil (optional)*

Zest from one lemon**
One teaspoon ground cardamom**

I don’t really remember the order Raja mixed the ingredients together but I did it this way: Whisk egg and sugar until well blended before adding the milk. Mix together semolina flour and baking powder. Add the semolina mixture to the batter and whisk well together (make sure there are no lumps). Add the oil, lemon zest and cardamom. Let the batter rest for 15-30 minutes before baking the pancakes.

Heat up a frying pan with some neutral oil (if using nonstick you don’t need any oil in the pan). When the pan is hot lower the heat to medium. Spoon up some batter in the pan with a sauce ladle (You may need to add more milk to the batter if it’s too heavy. It should be fairly easy to pour into a pan). When the pancake has nice decorative holes and starts to get firm on top, flip the pancake over. The other side should now have a nice brown color. Press down the pancake with your spatula so the pancake doesn’t rise. Continue until done. Repeat until batter is finished.

It may take some time to get used to how much batter you need for every pancake. A finished pancake should be about 1/8” thick.

Serve the pancakes with sour cream and seasonal fruit and berries for breakfast or brunch. I loved it with a simple apple & orange fruit salad spiced with mint and chopped pistachio. The pancakes can also be done as Raja’s desert, layered with melted dark chocolate (she added some neutral oil to the chocolate) and topped with fresh mint and fruit of your choice. Serve it cool when the chocolate is firm.

*Raja used some neutral oil in the batter and fried the pancakes in a non-stick frying pan. As I didn’t use a non-stick pan I learned that the pancakes got a little greasy with oil both in the batter and in the pan.  They still tasted great but got firmer and easier to handle with oil only in the pan.
**Raja didn’t flavor her pancakes with cardamom and lemon, instead she used 1-2 teaspoons vanilla sugar. I just didn’t have any at home when re-creating the recipe. Both versions are equally delicious.

If you planing to go to Marrakesh and want to participate in a cooking class, I can warmly recommend Raja’s class. Contact Jean Peres at Riad Dar One for details and booking.

Illustrations by Johanna Kindvall

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There they sit in their dusky purple or light green glory. So sweet, so soft, so decadent. Figs. Figs have two short seasons: July and late September”¦ so get them while you can.

They are special because they don’t travel well, don’t last long and their season is short, so I’m always tempted to buy them.

But, once I get them home, I tend to fall back on the same old variations of easy appetizers. Sometimes I’ll stuff them with blue cheese and top them with toasted nuts. Or maybe I’ll stuff them with goat or cream cheese and wrap them in prosciutto. Both are worthy, but not too exciting.

But figs are much more versatile than you might think. They are great with creamy sweet things like ice cream and yogurt for dessert, and the classic prosciutto pairing proves their worth in savory dishes.

Here are a few recipes from the web to get your fig creativity flowing.

The usual fig pairing suspect, prosciutto, makes an appearance here in this arugula salad with Parmesan and figs from Epicurious.

This article in Seattle PI offers a host of ideas, but the one I’m interested in is the Fettuccine with Lemon, Rosemary, and Fresh Figs.

And from Simply Recipes, we have a super simple Fig Galette for dessert. This would be wonderful garnished with a little crème fraîche.

Image: David Nikon vs. Canon

The post Figs: Not Just for Newtons appeared first on EcoSalon.

This is the season for outdoor eating and impromptu get togethers. It’s also the season for stone fruit – peaches, apricots, plums, cherries, and nectarines.

Here’s a gorgeous dessert to take to a cook-out or barbecue. It’s quick and easy to put together, simple enough to showcase the fruit without overpowering it and the dough is easy to work with – even for those who are inexperienced with pie crust. The only secret to a flaky crust is to keep the ingredients as cold as possible and don’t mix the dough too much. Make this with whatever stone fruit looks best at the market. You can use one type or several.

You’ll need:

3 tablespoons yogurt
1/3 cup ice water
1 cup flour
1/4 cup cornmeal
1 teaspoon sugar, plus about 1 tablespoon additional for sprinkling on top
1/2 teaspoon salt
7 Tablespoons butter, cut into small pieces and chilled
About 2 large peaches or nectarines, or 4 to 5 plums, or many cherries, or a mixture (pitted and sliced)

To make:

Stir together yogurt and water and keep in the freezer while you mix the other ingredients.

Mix together flour, cornmeal, sugar, and salt. Add butter and work in quickly with a pastry blender, leaving some pieces of butter the size of small peas.

Sprinkle the ice water/yogurt mixture over the flour-butter mixture gradually, mixing it in with a fork. Be careful not to over mix. The dough can still be crumbly, but should stick together when pinched. You may not need to use all the yogurt-water mixture.

Gather the dough into a ball, wrap and refrigerate for two hours.

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. F.

Roll out dough to a quarter inch thickness and transfer to a baking sheet. Top the dough with sliced fruit, working in a spiral from the inside out, leaving a border of about 2 inches all along the edge of the dough. Fold the edges of the dough inward to encase the fruit, and sprinkle with sugar.

Bake at 400 degrees until the crust is brown and flaky and the fruit soft, bubbling and fragrant, about 15 to 20 minutes. Enjoy!

We recommend using local, organic ingredients whenever possible.

Image: bensonkua

The post Ecosalon Recipes: Seasonal Fruit Galette appeared first on EcoSalon.