English Peas, Spring Onions and Roasted Almonds

Just cooked English peas, sautéd spring onions and roasted, salted almonds are a delicious combination of tender sweet, sweet pungent, and crunchy just salty. You can set this side dish next to grilled fish or chicken or mashed potatoes and a roast. It's...

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Fruit Vegetables Category Archive

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Squash Casserole

Here is a winter squash casserole adapted from The Farm Journal.

Serve this casserole with green peas and chicken on a brisk autumn evening and you will certainly call it a good day.

Ingredients

3 cups hot mashed butternut squash

¼ cup butter

1 teaspoon salt

⅛ teaspoon pepper

1 teaspoon minced onion

¼ cup milk

3 eggs, well beaten

¼ cup buttered bread crumbs

Directions

1 To hot cooked squash add butter; beat until butter melts. Stir in salt, pepper and onion. Blend milk into eggs; add to squash mixture.

2 Pour into greased 1½-quart casserole; top with buttered bread crumbs. Set in pan of warm water and bake in moderate oven (300ºF) until knife inserted into center comes out clean, about 45 minutes.

Makes 6 servings.

Cooking Winter Squash

Winter squashes are the most plentiful from early autumn until late winter.

Unlike the summer squashes, the winter squashes must be cooked before they are eaten. Add winter squash to soups, stews, couscous, and curries. Use winter squash to make pies, cakes, muffins, cookies, pudding, soufflés, and cream desserts.

Choose a winter squash—such as the Hubbard, butternut, acorn, or buttercup—that is hard shelled and heavy for its size. That means the squash will be mature and the flesh is ready for eating.

To serve four, you will need to select a squash that weighs at least 2 to 3 pounds.

Winter squashes have tough, hard skins that are never eaten. It is best to cook a winter squash in its skin.

Acorn, butternut, Kabocha, and pumpkin should be cut in half length wise before cooking. Banana and Hubbard squash should be cut into serving size pieces. Use a heavy-bladed knife. Remove the seeds and stringy insides and you will be ready to cook. You can peel the skin away after cooking.

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Winter Squashes and Pumpkins

Winter squashes are best from early fall through winter.

Winter squashes are drier, more fibrous, and much sweeter than summer squashes. Their thick, hard shells can not be eaten—like summer squashes, but these squashes can be stored into the winter and almost into the early spring.

The sweet flesh of winter squash becomes creamy when cooked, and the seeds can be washed, dried, roasted and served either plain or salted.

Winter squashes belong to the Cucurbita family of squashes, marrows, and pumpkins.

Here are the leading winter squash varieties:

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Baked Pumpkin with Ginger

Presenting pumpkin the vegetable.

Here is a recipe for baked pumpkin shell which you can serve with pork or turkey.

Pumpkin is a winter squash just like Hubbard squash and banana squash. The winter squashes have hard rinds and are eaten when fully mature.

When selecting a winter squash, look for a hard, tough rind and a squash that feels heavy for its size. Heaviness means that the rind wall is thick and the flesh is edible.

This recipe calls for pumpkin but you can use either a Hubbard or banana squash instead.

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Cooking Pumpkin

October is fresh pumpkin month. You’ll find pumpkins in September and pumpkins in November, but October is when more than 80 percent of the pumpkins grown each year are harvested and come to market.

Select a pumpkin that is bright colored, firm, and unblemished.

How much pumpkin do you need? Remember that three pounds raw pumpkin will make 3 cups cooked, mashed pumpkin.

Once you get the pumpkin home, keep it in a cool, dry place away from frost danger until you are ready to use it. Pumpkins should be used within 1 month of harvest.

When you are ready to cook, use a large knife to halve or quarter the pumpkin then scoop out the seeds and stringy portion. Then cut the halves or quarters into smaller pieces.

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Oriental Eggplants

Of course you know the large somewhat bulbous purple eggplant (called aubergine in Britain and many other parts of the world). But there are many other shapes and colors of eggplant: long and thin, egg-shaped, pale purple, yellow, and white to name a few.

Oriental-type eggplants are primarily slim, tapered or pointed elongated fruits that may remind you somewhat of a skinny, smooth and shiny cucumber. Oriental eggplants are mild, tender-skinned, creamy-fleshed, and quick-cooking eggplants.

The Oriental-type eggplants can be divided into two groups: Chinese eggplants and Japanese eggplants.

Chinese eggplants are lavender-blushed white, amethyst, and red-violet colored. They are delicate and low in seeds. The Chinese eggplant has a purple calyx, or stem cap.

Japanese eggplants are dark violet to inky-purple and are usually heavier and firmer than Chinese eggplants. The stem cap or calyx of the Japanese eggplant is bright green.

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Popular Chile Peppers

There are more than 200 varieties of chilies or hot peppers. Sometimes the names of chilies can get a bit confusing because often the same pepper will be known by two or even three different names.

Here’s a quick users’ guide to about four dozen very popular chilies and how you can used them in the kitchen. All of these peppers are member of the genus Capsicum. The species name is given in parentheses. The Scoville heat unit (SU) or pungency rating is listed for many.

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Chilies

Chilies or hot peppers can be eaten raw, baked, fried, grilled, or stuffed. They are used as a vegetable fresh and as a spice dried.

Chilies, like sweet peppers, are not only aromatic—like celery and onion—but contain natural chemicals that enhance the flavor of other foods during cooking.

Generally, small, hot chilies—such as the jalapeño, Serrano, poblano, Anaheim, and banana--are used fresh. They are often chopped and then simmered or stir-fried with other foods. The longer a chili is cooked, the hotter the flavor.

Large hot peppers more often are dried and then used whole, ground, or crushed for blending with other foods. Dry-roasted chilies are the most intensely flavored. Several varieties of dried and ground chilies combined will add a complexity of flavors to prepared foods.

Peppers boost the tastes of other ingredients. Fresh chilies combine well with fresh tomato-based sauces, onions, avocadoes, beans and lentils, mild cheeses, sausages, meat stews and sautés, corn, poultry, fish, and shellfish. Dried chiles are added to curry powder, chili powder, cayenne, and pizza pepper.

The skin of a chili has its own distinctive flavor and that flavor varies from one variety to the next. To begin to learn more about which chilies you like best, start with the skins. The seeds and ribs of a pepper should be removed to isolate the flavor of the chili skin.

Chilies, like sweet peppers, are widely available fresh during the summer and fall months.

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Two Cucumbers: ‘Diva’ and ‘Amira’

Can there actually be two “World’s Best Cucumber”?

To decide, taste ‘Diva’ and ‘Amira’ two very tasty slicing cucumbers.

‘Diva’ comes to the competition with all of the fanfare. In 2002, ‘Diva’ became an All-America Selection—which is a sort of growers’ Academy Award for best performing plants.

‘Amira’ has never taken home the All-America Selection award, but whenever you read or hear about ‘Amira’ the phrase “one of the best cucumbers” is close by.

Both ‘Diva’ and ‘Amira’ are fresh-eating cucumbers. That’s means you can slice them right onto a sandwich or salad moments after they come off the vine.

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Eggplant

The mild flavor and light, spongy texture of the eggplant make it a good match for other vegetables, browned and chopped meat, cooked fish or shellfish.

The eggplant can be sliced and simmered, sautéed or stir-fried, pan-fried, deep-fried, baked or boiled, and broiled and grilled.

One small or medium-size eggplant split lengthwise will make two shells perfect for stuffing as its own casserole dish. Just mix the flesh of the eggplant together with bread crumbs, stuff the shells, and bake.

Locally grown eggplants will be at your farm market in mid- to late summer, August through September in the Northern Hemisphere.

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