Squash Carpaccio

My wife does not like cooked squash at all--it's a textural thing. So we've found ways to eat squash raw. This is our version of a squash carpaccio, using the Italian striped squash from the garden, sliced very thinly, along with a fresh Maryland goat cheese and a chiffonade of our own basil.

Season with extra-virgin olive oil and a drizzle of rice wine vinegar, coarse salt and freshly ground black pepper.


We made dinner of it along with our famous beet and tomato salad (I'm thinking beet and watermelon would work as well, no?) and a salad of brown rice, diced red and yellow bell pepper, artichoke hearts and hearts of palm.

This is a cool, nutritious summer dinner using just about everything we are harvesting in the garden at the moment (except for all those cucumbers). And there's hardly any cooking involved, which keeps the heat down in the kitchen.

I'll Take Those Three Ibuprofins

Whoever said gardening was easy?

It might not be immediately obvious, but getting our front-yard kitchen garden to look like this took the better part of the Memorial Day weekend. By the end of it, we were grilling burgers and hot dogs and sipping our gin-and-tonics, but I was bushed.

First, I harvested about 10 pounds of various mustard greens and turnip greens and Chinese greens from this bed, blanched the greens and packed them for freezing. Then I applied my usual cultivation approach to the bed--working my forked spade all around to loosen the soil, breaking up the surface with my stirrup hoe, stirring in some compost.

We are transitioning to summer. The bed is now planted with two varieties of pickling cucumbers to grow up trellises on the right, Italian marrow squash in the middle, and three types of radishes in two rows on the left.

The larger part of this bed has been lying fallow for the longest time while the onions, inter-planted with radishes on the right, grow tall. But it was finally time to transplant the tomatoes. Here we have Cherokee Purple, Dr. Carolyn and Big Boy, all comfy in their thick layer of straw mulch.

I had planted Tokyo Bekana greens, dill, arugula and lettuce behind the rhubarb, figuring they would tolerate a little shade. Well, I sort of miscalculated how fast and large the rhubarb would grow. It's very happy in its compost-amended bed. So the other plants never did much except go to seed. But I needed to clear them out of the way to prepare the soil and plant okra. (See yesterday's post.)

This bed was the scene of last year's arugula going to seed. I collected quite a load of seed pods. I'm hoping daughter will help me pick through them to collect the seeds. Then more time spent with the forked spade, the stirrup hoe and hauling buckets of compost from the compost pile before planting more tomatoes: Mortgage Lifter and Green Zebra.

I give the individual tomato plants plenty of room to breathe. They're spaced four feet apart. At the next opportunity, I'll install cages made of concrete reinforcing wire. I plan to plant some zinnias in front of the tomatoes--we always like to have some flowers in the garden--and our collection of peppers and Asian eggplant.

Visible in the far rear is the last bed I renovated for the summer. It's now planted with two Roma tomatoes and a large section of sweet potatoes. This is our first year growing sweet potatoes and I'm anxious to see how they perform in this particular bed. It's situated on the north side of the house, but in summer gets sun in the morning and late afternoon.

Yikes...just writing about all this work makes me hungry for another Ibuprofin.

Wild for Squash

Have I mentioned that one of my ambitions is to initiate the ultimate squash cook-off here in the nation's capital? Are you up to the challenge?

Maybe next year.

Meanwhile, the food section at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette has put together this enticing collection of squash recipes.

Have any of your own you'd like to add to the pot?

Sweet Surrender

After an exhaustive search for a summer squash casserole recipe that does not call for heavy cream and cheese, I have hoisted the white flag. I officially surrender.

But to make the casserole a bit more interesting, I've added fresh bread crumbs made from one of Whole Foods' "Asiago Volcano" breads.

Otherwise this casserole seems to follow the usual pattern of squash plus onion plus cream plus eggs plus cheese. To my mind, we should make a concerted effort to have plenty of ways to prepare squash so we are not caught off guard when the deluge strikes.

I lifted this recipe from the Martha Stewart website and only adjusted it a little so that I could use the entire basket of Italian squash I've been accumulating on my kitchen counter. My Italian squash plants are not necessarily prolific, but the size of the squash is impressive. What I think is important is the initial cooking of the squash with salt to draw out the moisture. Otherwise, you might have a wet casserole.

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

Cut 2 pounds of squash (can be zucchini, yellow squash or a combination) into 1/2-inch slices. Peel and cut 1 large yellow onion into large dice. Place the squash and onion in a cook pot and cover with water. Add 1 tablespoon salt. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat and cook until squash is tender. Drain into a colander and allow to cool.

In a large bowl, mix the cooked squash and onion with 1 cup fresh bread crumbs (cut part of a loaf and run it through the food processor); 3 large eggs, lightly beaten; 1 cup heavy cream, 1 teaspoon fresh thyme leaves; 1/2 cup grated sharp cheddar cheese (you'll need another 1/2 cup later); 1 teaspoon salt; 1 teaspoon ground black pepper; dash cayenne pepper.

Pour the mixture into a greased casserole. Dust with more bread crumbs and another 1/2 cheddar cheese. Place in oven and cook until bread crumbs are lightly browned, about 30 minutes.

Serve this immediately with a chilled bottle of Chablis. Or, make it a day ahead and reheat it.

Summer Squash Carpaccio

Fourth of July celebrations were briefly interrupted yesterday when thunderstorms threatening tornadoes swept through the area around the District of Columbia. Imagine thousands of people being evacuated from the National Mall into nearby federal buildings.

Well, we knew those buildings--including the U.S. Department of Agriculture--had to be good for something.

So although our own Independence Day soiree endured a brief rain shower it was not to be denied. The high point had to be my wife's stuffed hamburgers cooked on the grill.

After 16 years of marriage, I am still learning about my wife's hidden talents. This one she picked up working at a restaurant years ago. The trick is to make a stuffing of cream cheese infused with sauteed garlic and chives. Take a handful of beef and divide it into two smaller patties. Press those out and lay a small scoop of stuffing onto one of them. Then cover with the second patty and press the patties together around the edges.

My wife claims that burgers cook much better and retain their shape (meaning they don't cook up into a ball) if you make a deep depression in the middle of the burger before it goes on the grill. Having cooked her burgers a few times, I'd have to agree. Everyone at last night's party had a rave for these stuffed burgers, definitely not for those counting their cholesterol.

But the main reason for this post is to put out there another method for rendering edible all those summer squash you and your neighbors are harvesting from the garden. I was watering the garden at my daughter's charter school the other day when a neighbor who tends a small plot in his front yard approached me and whispered, "Do you like squash?" I could barely hear him so he repeated, "Do you like squash?" When I nodded in the affirmative he left for a brief minute, then returned with a bag full of big, beautiful yellow squash.

"I have so many, I have to give them away," he lamented.

In our house, yellow squash are a bit of a pariah. My wife won't eat them. We don't grow them. But I'm not one to turn down free food. I decided the best way to deal with these squash was to serve them to the crowd that came to dinner last night and since I didn't feel much like cooking them I improvised a platter of what foodies are calling "squash carpaccio."

That would be raw squash dressed any which way you like. It's so ridiculously easy I would not call it a recipe so much as kitchen prep. You slice the squash very thinly, scatter it on a platter, then drizzle with extra-virgin olive oil, a squeeze of lemon juice, a chiffonade of herbs (basil, mint, etc.), salt, pepper and a fresh cheese--crumbled--such as goat cheese or Feta.

It helps to have a sharp slicing tool such as a mandolin. That will definitely make the job easier. Simply run the squash cross-wise over the blade. But for a different look, you can slice the squash lengthwise into ribbons using a vegetable peeler.

Try this with zucchini as well, or mix zucchini and yellow squash for a handsome plate. Guests don't even realize they're eating raw squash.

"Is this cucumber?" one guest inquired last night.

Nope, squash.

Summer's First Squash

Last night I was determined to eat from the garden and one of our squash plants obliged with a magnificent specimen.

You hear so many jokes about gardeners being inundated with zucchini that I wasn't quite sure what to expect when I planted my squashes last year. But this has turned out to be one of my favorite plants in the garden.

Similar to the zucchini, ours is an Italian variety called "Striata de Italia," owing to the light green stripes that run the length of the mildly ribbed fruit. It is a striking vegetable and the foliage is also lush and magnificent. The stems and giant leaves grow boldly upright, looking like a giant rhubarb plant.

At some point in the season, the leaves also will take on the same variegated stripes. Or at least they did last year.

We made the mistake last year of going on vacation just as the fruits were beginning to ripen. I must have forgotten to tell our friend Helen, who was watering for us while we were gone, to by all means harvest and eat anything that looked ready, because when we got back the squashes were huge.

I don't mean just big. These things were Chernobyl humongous, as big as your arm. I wasn't even sure they were edible. I lugged them down to the small produce stand I was operating on Saturdays in front of my daughter's charter school thinking they might attract some attention. Just as a curiosity, mind you. But I wound up selling them to some squash lovers who reported that they were not only edible, but delicious. They made several meals, I'm sure.

So this year I'm keeping a very close eye on these squashes, as they seem to grow by leaps and bounds overnight. The one we ate last night doubled in size in just a few days, and this morning I noticed one growing on another plant that is almost equally as large.

Each plant has numerous blossoms, but not all turn into viable squashes. The plant I picked from last night had two squashes that seemed to be doing fine a week ago, but then began to brown and shrink, no doubt because of some sucking insect that was making a meal of them. I left them on the plant as sacrificials.

Sometime in the dead of summer, when everything is sweltering here in the District of Columbia, the squashes will be overcome with powdery mildew. The nation's capitol seems to be a perfect environment for powdery mildew. All of my squashes got it last year. The garden looked like a field of fresh snow. Then the foliage collapses and there's nothing to do but pull it out.

As for eating these squashes, I typically cut them into thin slices (along with beautiful yellow squash that Mike brought to our Urban Gardeners brunch last Sunday). I slide the slices into a heavy skillet with extra-virgin olive oil heated to almost smoking.

Cook the squash hard to brown them, adjusting the temperature so they don't burn. Wait till the end to season with salt and pepper, as they brown better before the salt begins to draw out the moisture.

To finish the squash, season with finely chopped thyme and fresh marjoram if you have any. Distribute onto plates and give them a dusting of Parmesan cheese.

We ate this with a buccatini pasta tossed with a pesto from last year that has kept ever so well in the refrigerator all these months...