Posts from — August 2010

This meal is a standby at our house because it’s simply delicious. The necessary ingredients are almost always on hand in our pantry and freezer. Monterey Beans and Cheese is also extremely flexible so we can easily use up leftover meat or vegetables. This time of year we use ripe tomatoes from our garden. Here’s our take on the recipe from the More-With-Less Cookbook (World Community Cookbook)
by Doris Janzen Longacre.

Monterey Beans and Cheese

Fry, drain, and break into pieces:
• 2 slices bacon
Set aside. Sauté in bacon fat until tender:
• 1 medium-sized onion, sliced
• 1 jalapeno pepper, diced
Add:
• bacon bits
• 2 cups cooked black beans
• 1/4-1/2 lb. shredded cheddar cheese
• 2 ripe tomatoes, diced or 3/4 c. tomato sauce
• 1/4 c. beef bouillon or tomato juice
• 1 Tablespoon chili powder
• 1/2 t. salt
• dash of pepper
Cook slowly, stirring constantly, until ingredients are blended and cheese smooth — about 5 minutes. Serve with rice.

Variations:
•This dish can be made vegetarian-style leaving out the bacon altogether– we don’t make it that way, however. Even for an omnivore, this dish contains just a little meat and you get a whole lot of flavor from that.
•You can use whatever type of beans you like best. Kidney beans or white beans work well, but black beans are our favorite kind.
•The cheese used can also be varied.
•Different peppers can also replace the jalapeno. Chipotele add a smokey flavor. Green or red pepper make a less spicy dish.

We like the spicy element, however, so we tend to make Monterey Beans and Cheese on the spicy side, sometimes adding a chili pepper as well. Summer or winter, this meal is easily prepared in the 20 minutes it takes to make the accompanying rice.

Recently, Jan and I were asked to write a column on kitchen gardening for our local on-line newspaper, AnnArbor.com. For the most part, we intend to cross-post articles but our first post was a getting-to-know-you piece that’s exclusive to AnnArbor.com. On Tuesday, we cross-posted about ichiban eggplant and we got a question by email that’s good enough to make a whole post about. One reader noted that we referred to eggplant as both a fruit and a vegetable and wanted to know, basically, what’s up with that?

Fruits vs. vegetables: It’s a great debate, I’ve come to appreciate, joined in by cooks and diners and gardeners and botanists and I even think the U.S. government has an opinion about it because of tariffs. I do not pretend to resolve the matter, only to add my voice to the great conversation. PLEASE, feel free to add your voice in the comments.

My favorite definition of a vegetable is “food your kids won’t eat.” I am only partially joking but what I like about this approach is that it accents preparation and reception. I’ve eaten sweet potatoes that were clearly a “vegetable” – roasted split down the middle with butter and garlic as a side to tandoori chicken- but also baked into a pie for dessert. One of Jan’s favorite salads blends garden greens with walnuts, crumbled bleu cheese… and dried cherries. I suspect many omnivores have trouble grokking vegetarianism because they’ve implicitly defined “vegetable” as a side-dish. To me, vegetables are the broad category of garden products primarily when considered as food. When I tell folks I’m a vegetable gardener, they know I’m growing things to eat, though I prefer the term “kitchen garden” since I feel it allows me to tuck in a few flowers.

But personally when I use the word “fruit” I’m indicating a specific part of plant anatomy. A fruit – to me – is a fleshy seed container. This means that tomatoes are fruits as are apples, as well as rose hips – though some rose varieties have a fleshier fruit than others. My beloved jalapeno peppers are fruits as are pumpkins and squash. But kale – the edible part – is a just a leaf as is lettuce and cabbage. Broccoli – if we catch it before it goes into bloom – is a cluster of buds. Asparagus is a stalk. Corn – to me – doesn’t feel like a fruit because it lacks flesh apart from the juicy sweetness of the kernels themselves… but that’s where the problem comes in. To botanists, I think corn is a fruit because their idea of “fruit” is also a seed container but they don’t seem to care if it’s fleshy or not, only if it develops from a flower.

So why do I willfully diverge from the proper botanical definition? By describing a fruit as a fleshy seed container, I identify two interacting factors I keep in mind about all my “fruits,” namely seeds and flesh. This system isn’t as important with my non-fruiting garden inhabitants. The plant itself is likely most interested in producing viable seeds while I’m (usually) more interested in getting delectable flesh. My general rule of thumb is that I don’t let any fruit sit on the vine too long unless I’m intending to use the seeds. At one extreme, I like to harvest yellow summer squash when they are clearly immature, when they haven’t even begun to think about making seeds. With winter squash and pumpkins, however, I let the seeds develop because they are a product themselves. (Try them oven dried with a dash of tamari or as a replacement for pine nuts in pesto.) When to pick tomatoes is itself another Great Debate – whether to let them ripen fully or pick them when they first start to turn – but in the background is the concern about the quality of the flesh and whether the plant has started diverting too much attention to making viable seed.

That’s what I mean when I say “vegetable” or “fruit” but I’m far from dogmatically attached to these usages. What do you think?

Ichiban (sometimes called “Japanese-style”) eggplant remind me of small carnival balloons, the kind that clowns twist into animal shapes, though I’ve never seen one this shade of purple. They’re the perfect eating size this time of the year, and if you didn’t plant any in your garden, these long slender fruit are readily available at the Farmers’ Markets around town. Although they might look exotic, don’t be scared. This recipe is an easy introduction to putting the ichiban eggplant on your table.

Wash the fruit and cut off the stem. I take this opportunity to delight in their shape and color and the feel of their resilient flesh. If we’re grilling, we slice them in half lengthwise and put them on for a few minutes for each side, just long enough for the flesh to get tender. It’s all too easy to grill them ‘til they’re soft bordering on mushy which is a texture I don’t enjoy. For your first experience, I suggest slicing them widthwise into wheels about a half inch thick. The cooks on TV would suggest olive oil but honestly a squirt of nonstick cook spray works as well. Saute until tender in a nonstick pan. The color changes a little but the best indicator is the texture of the flesh.

While they’re cooking, whip up this sauce. It’s my favorite kind of recipe, that is, it’s proportional so it can be easily scaled up or down.

Special Miso Paste Sauce
- one part red Miso paste
- one part mirin
- one part sugar
Simmer on the stove for 20 minutes or microwave it for 4 minutes stirring periodically. If you have four eggplant, try using a 1/3 cup for each part.

Miso is another product of the miraculous soybean and mirin is a sweet rice wine used exclusively for cooking. Both miso and mirin are available at the People’s Food Co-op or any of the Asian grocery stores around town. But now that I think about it, they’re probably available wherever you do your grocery shopping, although you might have to ask.

This potent sauce is both sweet and tangy, and since it’s a favorite around our house, we apply it like a glaze to the cooked eggplant.

You might want to keep the sauce on the side, until you hear the verdict at your house. We serve these glazed eggplant over rice as a side dish for grilled shrimp or chicken. The sauce also works well with other cooked vegetables, like broccoli, carrots and green beans. It also stores well in the fridge.

There are plenty of other (lower-carb) ways to serve this remarkable vegetable so you might consider growing a few eggplant in your garden. The plant itself is quite handsome, with a relatively contained growth habit and charming flowers. The purple fruit contrasts the green of the leaves beautifully so you might sneak a couple in among your ornamentals. The only real pest it suffers are flea beetles but we’ve found a way to outwit them that we’ll share next spring.

(20Minute Jim) Tomatoes are ripening fast enough that we’re *almost* tired of eating them fresh. Almost. Summer squash are appearing on the dinner table regularly. Basil is plentiful which makes pesto as much a staple as butter. Eggplant, even the plump Italian style ones, are ready to eat. The garden is handing out its bounty almost faster than we can accept these gifts.

And of course, the garden itself is a mess.

The winter squash vines have crept over the path and are ready to over-run the cabbage. Tomato vines are sprawling over even the tallest of the cages while other tomatoes seem to be wrestling with the basil. The raspberry bushes are overdue for pruning. The mint, despite our good-natured attempts to contain it, has fully claimed the asparagus bed and the asparagus fronds are lolling over like a lazy vacationers in a hammock.

Just when I’m most proud of the garden, it’s very lush exuberance is also a bit embarrassing. When I show my friends through the garden during August, I find myself spending as much time trying to explain, say, that the Coro del Toro peppers are actually hiding *underneath* the vines of those San Marzano tomatoes and that, no we didn’t really intend to have the pumpkins take over *that* much of the fence. I’ve found myself nearly apologizing as if these over flowing beds reflect a moral shortcoming.

But I’ve decided to be easier on myself. I find that this time of year, I’m spending my 20 minutes just harvesting, maybe with a few minutes to yank up a weed or two. And that’s OK too. Our kitchen garden is a blend of process and product, of means and ends after all. Some times of the year, there’s very little “product.” It’s not that time of the season.