Cooking Abundant Summer Vegetables

“Looks like everyone else is sick of cucumbers too,” I overheard a fellow Ditmas Park CSAer comment when she donated her cucumbers to the swap box. What do you do when you can’t manage another cucumber (or kale leaf, or beet…)? I searched Brooklyn food blogs for inspiration.

Apples: Between the Greenmarket the siren call of orchards outside New Paltz it’s easy to go apple-wild. I love apples fresh and raw but Marie Viljoen of 66 Square Feet (the food) shares an enticing story and recipe called Apple Soup. I swear I can smell the vanilla through my monitor. She also shares a childhood apple pie memory.

Baby Bok Choy: Auria Abraham photographed step-by-step 2 Easy Ways to Love Your Chinese Greens. You don’t have to use baby bok choy, but one reader claimed the cold weather vegetable tasted fabulous with this recipe.

Cucumbers: I slice my abundance of cucumbers into a pitcher of water. Simple. Easy. Refreshing. This trick can be used with mint, apples, and strawberries too. (Qathra had cucumber/mint water yesterday.) 66 Square Feet (the food) has a more ambitious recipe: Cucumber Soup.

Kale: My kale strategy is store it until it wilts then feed it, guilt free, to my compost. Professional chef and food blogger Samantha shares an ingenious way to solve the too-much-kale dilemma which occurs at the same time as the not-enough-basil conundrum: Kale pesto.

Peaches: Last Sunday I baked a much requested peach cobbler using a recipe I found on The Food Network. Another option? Church Avenue Chomp’s Baby Treat Pie.

Tomatoes: Tomato salad is only mouth-watering during tomato season. Here is the recipe: Cube tomatoes. Cube fresh mozzarella, optional. Drizzle with extra virgin olive oil, salt, pepper, vinegar. Tear a few basil leaves over the salad. Stir gently together. Set aside until ready to serve. Caprese salad is the exact same ingredients, different presentation. Slice and layer instead of dice and stir.  Seriously Soupy uses her fresh tomatoes in, you guessed it, tomato soup.

Zucchini: Type “zucchini bread” into a search engine and you’ll instantly have variations of this favorite quick bread. My friend passes puréed zucchini off as white sauce for pasta. Sauté onions and garlic. Add the zucchini purée. Pour over freshly boiled pasta and serve with bread and tomato salad.

Also try:

Auria’s Malaysian Kitchen’s Grilled Summer Squash (serves 6-8)

6 medium zucchini and/or summer squash
4 cloves garlic – minced to a paste
4 tablespoons olive oil
4 tablespoons water
1/2 teaspoon whole brown mustard seeds
1/4 teaspoon whole fenugreek seeds (optional)
1/2 teaspoon powdered turmeric
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

1. Keeping the stems on the squash,  cut each one in half lengthwise. Lay the cut side down and cut thin strips lengthwise, leaving the tops attached.
2. Mix all the other ingredients in a bowl. Place the prepped squash in a ziploc bag (use two if you need to). Pour the marinade over the zucchini,  seal the bag and let it sit in your refrigerator for at least four hours rotating the bag every now and then to ensure even coverage.
3. On a medium high grill, cook the squash for four minutes on one side then turn over and cook for four minutes on the other side. The inside will be slightly softened and the outside will be perfectly browned and charred.

I love using turmeric in my cooking. Turmeric has been used in India for over 500 years and is known for its health benefits. It is a natural liver de-toxifier, powerful natural anti-inflammatory, aids in fat metabolism and weight management and has long been used in Chinese medicine as a treatment for depression. Wow,  sounds too good to be true, doesn’t it? And I even left out the more far-out claims about the benefits of this so-called “wonder spice.” All I know is it makes things taste good and I love the color it adds to various dishes.

Sautéing with onions and garlic is my go-to cooking strategy. Pickling, though, is Brooklyn’s trendiest cooking technique. (Jennifer from Last Night’s Dinner has a refrigerator pickle recipe that will help use up some of those cucumbers.) You can learn pickling, and so much more, without even leaving our borough:

• Purple Kale teaches you to look around your kitchen and cook with what you have instead of finding a recipe than foraging the supermarket for ingredients. Private and group sessions are available.

• Need vegetarian and vegan ideas? Contact Natural Gourmet Institute graduate, Samantha, who writes Memories at the Table.

• Auria spent her childhood apprenticing under her mother’s strict and exacting eye. Auria will teach you in a more spirited way, how to chop vegetables to be the exact same size. Contact her at Auria’s Malaysian Kitchen to set up a private lesson or to throw a cooking party.

• The Brooklyn Kitchen lists classes from pickling to home brewing to pig butchering.

Any other recipes or tips you have for using up a large bunch of summer’s bounty?