Summer squash 1 (easy) way for 3 (delicious) dishes!

Summer squash, garlic, onion, rosemary, and oregano

July is awash with summer squash, pretty much no matter where you live. Growing up in Vermont, I remember seeing baskets of green and yellow long necks lining country roads towards the end of summer with desperately scrawled “free” signs above them.  Neighbors would reel you in with offers of dinner, then insist that you take some squash with you when you left. By August, everyone is sick of this delicious, abundant, and multi-faceted vegetable.

I religiously wait for them to come into season, and when they do I just can’t get enough—summer squash is light, remarkably versatile, cheap, and easy to work with. If you think you don’t like it but have never tried it fresh (i.e. straight from the farm, not from Peru via your local grocer) you have to give it another try. It grows as fast as weeds, and lends itself really well to almost any flavor you’d like to throw at it. You can think of it as the tofu of vegetables, except less bland and overrated. Summer squash is high in just about every nutrient you’ve ever heard of—including vitamin A, B1, B2, B3, B6, C, K, Omega 3 fatty acids, folate, manganese…the list goes on—it’s so good for you that you that it makes the cut for the World’s Healthiest foods list.

If this is your first foray into summer squash, I applaud your willingness to give it a try!  This week, we’re doing squash 1 easy way for 3+ dishes. Perfect for new cooks and busy people everywhere! “But wait”, you say “won’t I get sick of all this squash?” Oh my god will you ever!  And that’s good, because once it’s gone, you can’t have it again until next summer—at least not the good stuff. You can find foreign-grown squash in every store across the country all year round, but it only resembles its locally grown cousin in looks—certainly not in nutrients or in taste. I find out of season summer squash to be mealy, bitter, and dry. A good summer squash is fragile, bruises easily, and holds the perfect amount of moisture and elasticity in its flesh for cooking quickly on high heat—the same traits make them perfect for the grill as well!

Summer squash pasta Parmesan

Of the 3 simple dishes I’m posting today, Jeremy’s pick for dinner was summer squash pasta Parmesan.  This week I’ll also serve squash fajitas with garlic mayo and cotija cheese, and polenta with sauteed squash (and any other veggies I have lying around, no doubt.)   Though I’m not profiling them tonight, this same preparation of squash is perfect for a tamale filling, and is an excellent in savory puff pastries.

Carolina Cole Slaw

Carolina Coleslaw on a Bison Fajita

I’ve spent some time in the south, and you can’t live there for more than a month without falling head over heals for the local food.  My residency in Asheville, NC was what sealed the deal for me.  Carolina BBQ is tangy and succulent, and is enough to make even the most stalwart Mid-West BBQ fan sit up and take note.  For me, Carolina coleslaw was a culinary revelation.  There’s nothing like it, and there’s really nothing better.  Light, fresh, and perfectly piquant, it just screams summer.

Shoulder Cuts, and the Art of Tenderizing with Marinades

Red wine marinade with a Lindner Farms Bison Chuck steak

I woke up late last Sunday, and didn’t make it up to the Hollywood farmer’s market until about an hour before it closed.  It’s usually pretty slim pickings for red meat when you don’t get there early, so I figured I’d let whatever they had dictate what I made for dinner.  All that remained for many vendors were the tough braising meats. Stews are great, but not when it’s 80-90 degrees during the day.  Lucky for me, I was able to nab a beautiful grass-fed

Pancakes

It totally tastes as good as it looks...possibly better.

There’s nothing better than breakfast on the weekend.  Something about waking up late and having a leisurely cup of morning joe always puts me in the mood for a good meal.  I’m a big fan of looking at finished food, and there are few things more satisfying than the visage of pancakes, bacon, and eggs

Green Bean Casserole with Caramelized Onions

Green Bean Casserole is the kind of dish you see most often around the holidays.  Sadly, a lot of people associate the name with pitiful, mushy green beans in a gravy of canned mushroom soup with some sort of chemically-founded fried onion thing on top.  Sound like something you’ve seen before?  Well that’s not what we’re making here today

Conventional vs. Organic and another argument for buying local

I came across the above cartoon this morning, and I have to admit that it kind of pissed me off.  I can’t argue with the value that makes this cartoon funny; eating organic is an activity that some people can’t afford.  There are people out there trying to feed their entire family with $100 a week, and if you’re one of those people, organic might be out of reach.  But is that really you?  Most people who say they can’t afford organic actually can, but choose not to prioritize it. While it’s true that some people simply don’t know the risks involved with buying conventional, I think plenty more do know, but choose to turn a blind eye anyway

Vegetable gyoza, and thoughts on learning to cook

Green onions, cilantro, garlic, ginger, carrots, and baby bok choy

When I originally set out to create the Provident Potato, it was my intention to help inquiring minds learn to cook.  I know a lot of people who would like to learn, but can’t figure out where to start.  Cooking regularly is an art, and it’s different from simply following a recipe.  You waste a lot of food if you don’t know how to put one ingredient into multiple uses.  Cooking seasonally asks one to make many different dishes from similar ingredients, and if you’re just learning to cook, this blog is a great place for you to start.  With this in mind, I’ve written detailed instructions for those of you out there who might not yet be old hands in the kitchen.  If you know what you’re doing, feel free to skip the details and head straight to the parts that are most useful to you.

You can make gyoza with a variety of fillings, but it is best served in its vegetarian incarnation in the spring when green leafy veggies are abundant. 

Wild Mushroom Risotto

Ladies and gentlemen, last night’s dinner was so good that in our haste to eat it, we forgot to document it!

Fortunately you have a good imagination, and know without even seeing it just how good this is going to be…and trust me, it was good!

This is an all season recipe that can be used with new varieties of mushrooms as they become available throughout the season.  Ingredients like onions, garlic, and fresh herbs are often available straight through the end of the summer season, and are available dry after that. Butter can be purchased from your local dairy farmer year round (co-ops and heath food stores are good sources too.)

The mushroom guy at my local farmer’s market here in Culver City (Dirk, from LA Funghi) had some great looking hen of the woods mushrooms on Tuesday, as well as my personal all-time favorite, morels.  Morels are expensive, and have a flavor that is best not interfered with.  I like to saute them in butter with a pinch of sea salt and a touch of freshly cracked black pepper.  Put a few on top of the portioned risotto for a gorgeous, mouthwatering finish.  Really any wild mushrooms will do for this dish, though some will be better than others.  If you’re not a seasoned wild mushroom eater, ask the person you buy your mushrooms from to recommend the best ones for this dish.  Trust me, he or she will know.

Morals and Morels

Locally collected Morels

It was a feeling of moral necessity that helped me drag myself to the farmer’s market yesterday, despite my steadfast desire to stay seated at my desk in a half-working, mostly time-wasting daze.  Since oil started gushing into the Gulf of Mexico over a month ago, I’ve grown almost completely despondent.  I’ve long been concerned with the havoc our human systems are wreaking on both the planet and our own societies, but the oil spill has pushed me over an edge of sorts.  We will probably drill again, even with a democrat in the white house, and an environmental catastrophe unfolding.  This reality has caused me to seriously question the fate of our collective future.

What does one do?  You can’t escape oil culture completely, and this dependence makes it hard to try escaping it at all.  From the vehicles that help us navigate modern life, to the clothes we wear and the food we put on our plates; sweet crude is a very real ingredient in the recipe of our modern existence.  But if we passively accept our fate as oil guzzlers by doing nothing to stop our personal consumption, spills like the one happening in the Gulf right now are totally on us.  You can blame BP, you can blame the government; at the end of the day, it is those of us who purchase and consume oil who are ultimately at fault.  That’s a market democracy, folks.  The day we stop demanding ever more energy in the form of oil-intensive products and services, is the day the last drill head is lifted from the soil.

The correlation between oil and food is one of America’s biggest dirty little secrets.