Frittata with roasted vegetables

 

At a certain point in heavy produce season, you need a way to use up odds and ends. This recipe is a valuable receptacle for garden bounty. Just tuck a bunch of vegetables into the bottom of a roasting pan, cut into sizes so they'll get done about the same time depending on how quickly each kind cooks, drizzle with olive oil, sprinkle with salt and pepper, roast about a half hour and you're set to make this frittata whenever you're ready. With the vegetables already cooked, it works well as a fast-fix meal for weeknights, weekend lunches with a green salad or for brunch.

Adding herbs such as rosemary or fresh thyme leaves to the vegetables as they roast is a nice touch, or you can mix them in with the eggs before baking. Red and yellow peppers work nicely here as well, as does butternut squash. Any leftover cooked vegetables can work in this, although roasting gives deeper flavor to the final dish. Parmesan is nice, but you can use whatever cheese you've got at hand. Basically, this dish is more of an approach than a recipe.

Frittata with roasted zucchini

Adapted from Martha Stewart Living Everyday Food, May 2005

 

Ingredients

3 summer squash or zucchini, halved lengthwise and then sliced into ½-inch thick slices

1 large red onion, cut into ½-inch wedges

5 plum tomatoes, halved lengthwise

2 tablespoons plus 1 teaspoon olive oil, divided

10 eggs

½ cup grated Parmesan

Coarse salt and pepper

Method

Preheat oven to 450. On a rimmed roasting pan, combine squash, onion and plum tomatoes. Drizzle with 2 tablespoons olive oil. Sprinkle with coarse salt and black pepper. Bake about 25-30 minutes until vegetables are tender and starting to brown. Set aside. (At this point, you could let the vegetables cool and refrigerate them for several days until you’re ready to use them.)

Reduce oven temperature to 400 degrees. Brush remaining teaspoon of olive oil inside a large quiche pan or deep dish pie plate. Put 4 cups of the roasted vegetables in the dish, reserving any leftover roasting oil for another purpose (so tasty).

Mix eggs, Parmesan, 1½ teaspoons coarse salt and ¼ teaspoon black pepper in a medium bowl. Pour over roasted vegetables. Bake 25 to 30 minutes until frittata is golden brown and set in the middle. Cut into wedges and serve warm or cold. Serves 6.

Rating: Simplicity works here. Elemental, but good. Good enough that you'll plan leftover vegetables.

Lemon-ricotta blueberry pancakes

 

Spoiler alert: Wow, these are good.

I was browsing through my breakfast cookbook section this morning in search of yet another thing to do with blueberries, preferably something not too involved. I ran across a recipe for lemon ricotta pancakes, which worked for me because I've lately been on a lemon-ricotta appetizer kick and had just the right amount of ricotta on hand. I figured I'd just add blueberries and be done.

Lemon-ricotta pancakes

Adapted from “Rise & Dine: Savory Secrets from America’s Bed & Breakfast Inns” by Marcy Claman. I'm not really the target audience for actual B&Bs, but their recipes are worth making in the comfort of one's own home where one isn't possibly expected to interact with strangers before having a spot of tea. This recipe comes from the Grünberg Haus Bed and Breakfast in Waterbury, Vt. It's still operating and looks pretty funky cool in a fab location, but it has new owners so who knows if these awesome pancakes are still on the menu.

Ingredients

¾ cup flour

1 tablespoon sugar

1 teaspoon baking powder

½ teaspoon nutmeg

Zest and juice of 1 lemon, divided

1 cup ricotta cheese

⅔ cup milk

2 eggs

1 cup or more fresh blueberries

Powdered sugar for serving, optional

Method

Combine flour, sugar, baking powder, nutmeg and lemon zest in a large bowl. Whisk to mix.

In a separate bowl, whisk together ricotta, milk, eggs and lemon juice. Stir into dry ingredients. It will look a little runnier than most pancake batters I’ve encountered, but if you let it sit while you heat up the griddle to 350 degrees, it will tighten up a bit.

Lightly grease hot griddle. Pour ⅓ cup batter onto griddle. It will spread out into a 5- to 6-inch pancake. Dot the surface of each with about 10 blueberries. Cook on one side until the batter on top is very nearly set and flip, cooking until lightly golden on the other side.

Since these spread out quite a bit, unless you have a really big griddle, it’s going to take some time to cook that many (it makes about 10). And these are thicker, softer pancakes, so be prepared to have them take longer to cook. You probably don’t want to have your temperature much above 350 or your pancakes will get too brown before they’re cooked through.

Serve topped with more blueberries and a sprinkling of powdered sugar, or butter and maple syrup.

Rating: The only thing wrong with serving these to company, other than having to make them in stages, is that it's nearly impossible to eat these without making mmm, mmm sounds. These are really freaking good, with the ricotta giving them a velvety texture, and the lemon and nutmeg giving it much more flavor than standard-issue pancakes that rely more on liberal doses of butter and maple syrup for their tastiness.

While I was interested in using up blueberries, these would I suspect be perfectly lovely without as well.

Followup: I made these again without the blueberries and substituted orange zest/juice because that's what I had on hand that needed using. That's a perfectly fine variation.

Tomato confit, fast and slow

Roasted cherry tomato confit

 One of my favorite things about summer is bringing in heaping handfuls of small little tomato jewels from the garden. In order to keep on top of them before the fruit flies set in, I turn out little pots of tomato confit to use on pizza, pasta and bruschetta. It freezes well, so I get to savor a bit of summer in the winter, too.

My go-to recipe for years has been a New York Times recipe published in the Star Tribune Taste section years ago, but I recently ran across a variation that could be made in a slow cooker. Given that one of my Pinterest boards is titled “Make that slow cooker do something,” this struck a chord. Plus, while it takes much more cooking time, it doesn’t mean turning on the oven when the August sauna descends.

Tomato confit

Adapted from “The Chef and the Slow Cooker,” by Hugh Acheson

Ingredients

16 plum tomatoes

1 tablespoon kosher salt

8 black peppercorns

4 bay leaves

3 sprigs fresh thyme (I used lemon thyme for a double-shot of lemon)

8 garlic cloves, smashed

2 fat strips of lemon zest (he recommends using a peeler)

2 cups extra-virgin olive oil

Method

Bring a large pot of water to a boil. Put tomatoes in boiling water three to four at a time and blanch until skin starts to separate, anywhere from 30 seconds to a minute depending on the size of your tomatoes. Remove tomatoes to an ice water bath with a slotted spoon. Peel and core tomatoes, placing them upright, core-side down in a slow cooker insert. Repeat until all tomatoes are peeled and cored and lined up like little tomato soldiers. (If you don't have tomato-canning hardened hands, you'll need to let them cool a bit until you're able to handle them.)

Season with the salt. Add peppercorns, bay leaves, thyme, garlic, and lemon zest. Pour olive oil over the top.

Cover slow cooker with lid and cook on low for 4 hours. Transfer tomatoes and flavorants to large jars. Top with cooking oil. Cap the jars and let cool. Store in refrigerator.

Rating: This was just fine. It makes a perfectly fine sauce, although not finer than an average stove-top simmered sauce. The lemon flavor didn't seem to come through, which was a disappointment. Perhaps doubling the amount added would help. Again, there's nothing wrong with this sauce, and the oil could have lots of other uses, but it is time consuming and fussy compared to its comparative worth.

Ready for the oven: 1 whole wheat pizza crust, a schmear of cherry tomato confit, and dollops of ricotta mixed with lemon zest, garlic and thyme

Cherry tomato confit

Adapted from the New York Times, which had the audacity to suggest discarding the wonderful roasted garlic. Sacrilege.

Ingredients

2 pints cherry tomatoes (a mix of colors is nice)

8 to 10 garlic cloves, peeled and halved if large

3 springs fresh rosemary leaves, chopped

Kosher salt

Crushed red pepper flakes

¼ cup olive oil

Method

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Spread tomatoes on a rimmed roasting sheet. Tuck garlic in between the tomatoes. Sprinkle with rosemary, salt and a generous pinch of red pepper flakes. Drizzle with the olive oil. Bake about 30 to 35 minutes, or until tomatoes are wilted and garlic and some of the tomatoes are just starting to get a touch of brown.

Remove from oven and smush gently with a spatula to spread the garlic a bit.

Rating: Truly one of the more wonderful substances. Roasting the cherry tomatoes makes them a spreadable sweet-savory treat, with just a touch of heat from the pepper flakes. Spread some goat cheese on toasted baguette slices, top with some of this and you've achieved perfection.

 

Obviously not all tomato confits are created equal. The cherry tomato confit is still hands down my favorite. It's much faster to make, both in terms of prep and cooking time, and the roasting really brings out the tomato flavors. It takes much less olive oil, so you're more likely to always have the pantry ingredients on hand. On the other hand, all that olive oil that goes into the slow cooker version gives you lots of flavorful olive oil in return that you can drizzle on pretty much anything, from risotto to roast chicken. And it does help out plum tomatoes, and makes a "just fine" sauce that doesn't require any stove top attention.

Blueberry ricotta orange scones

 

Fresh blueberries. Sunday morning. A tub of ricotta in the frig. The result was seemingly inevitable.

Blueberry ricotta scones

Adapted from bakerbynature.  She used lemon zest and iced them with a lemon juice-confectioner's sugar glaze. I didn't feel like lily gilding this morning, so I just opted for butter and I was in a mood for orange.

Ingredients

2½ cups flour

⅓ cup flour

1 tablespoon baking powder

½ teaspoon baking soda

½ teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon orange zest

8 tablespoons cold butter, cut into chunks

½ cup ricotta cheese

3 tablespoons half and half, plus 1 teaspoon, divided

1 egg, beaten, plus more for brushing tops

1 cup fresh blueberries

Coarse sugar for sprinkling

Method

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper.

In a large bowl, mix flour, sugar, baking powder, soda, salt and orange zest. Cut butter into flour mixture with a pastry blender until it looks like coarse crumbs.

Mix together ricotta, half and half and egg in a small bowl. Mix into flour-butter mixture with a fork. Fold in blueberries just to incorporate.

Turn out the rough dough onto a lightly floured board and shape into a circle about an inch thick. Cut into 8 wedges and transfer to baking sheet. Brush with beaten egg mixed with 1 teaspoon half and half. Sprinkle with coarse sugar. Bake for 15-18 minutes or until a light golden brown.

Rating: Nice. Respectable delivery device for plump juicy blueberries.

Random, but lovely

Well hello, handsome. This gem finally burst on the garden scene after seemingly weeks in the bud stage, and long after I’d forgotten I’d even planted it.

When I saw two lily-ish things poking through by the garage this spring, I was puzzled and at first thought they were another example of my tiger lilies going rogue in a spot where their vivid orange would be most jarring. I’d forgotten that when I hit reset on that particular garden bed last year, I’d planted three of these lilies, only to have them felled by rascally rabbits in short order, long before they bloomed. 

The entire bed was a mass of good intentions gone awry, since the order of bare-root plants arrived at the worst possible moment and it kind of went downhill from there.  So this year, while pondering how to regroup minus the three astrantia plants that didn’t survive last year’s delayed planting, I was wondering what on earth those lilies were.

Now I know, and I wish there were more of them, and that it wasn’t the middle one of the threesome that died, naturally, leaving an odd gap. The rest of the bed is a hot mess, but at least now I know I’ve got something lovely to work with.