Harvest Days

These past two days I have been cooking and preserving boxes of goodness from gardens; ours here at home, from the Kingston house, and the CSA box.  Dede texted me this morning and asked for a tutorial on puréed cauliflower and I had just made a double batch yesterday!  People, cauliflower purée is better than mashed potatoes and so dang healthy!  We've eaten it a lot this summer.

The second batch hit the ceiling and cupboards until I got the lid on tight!

Here's what you do - break up a head of cauliflower into manageable pieces cutting off the thick stem first. I steam my broccoli until fork tender but you can microwave it or cook it whichever way you're used to.  When tender, toss it in a blender, (this might take two batches), after it gets going and you observe the consistency, add some milk (or broth if you don't do milk), a bit of butter and purée until it's creamy and thick.  Salt and pepper to taste.  The taste is fabulous!  If you don't even care for cauliflower you will love it.  Serve it to your kids and they will eat it.  I've been sautéing scallops in butter and lime and serving them over a pile of this purée.  Lovely to look at and eat.  I ate some purée with dinner and froze the rest for other meals since I had cooked two heads.  After the cauliflower I cooked all the corn we got from the CSA and then cut it from the cobs for freezing.  We now have bags of it for winter meals.

After the corn, I picked all of the tomatoes hanging off our tired plants; gosh they are ugly after all the major producing they have done this summer.  We ate pans of oven roasted tomatoes this summer and made bags of freezer sauce - I did both again today.  Whatever batch of roasted tomatoes we didn't eat immediately I puréed and froze for pasta sauces.  Here's my recipe:

Cut up medium and large tomatoes, keep cherry ones whole.  Place tightly together but in one layer on a very large rimmed cookie sheet.  Lightly drizzle on olive oil, then balsamic vinegar, sprinkle on fresh or dried basil and oregano at your discretion, I also sprinkled on both onion and garlic powders and then freshly ground S and P and finally brown sugar.  Bake uncovered 425 for 45 minutes.  These tomatoes taste divine with the subtle carmelized sweetness of the balsamic and brown sugar.  We were eating them on and with everything.  I put them on toast every morning for a week!  For the killer pasta sauce, just purée in a blender.  It freezes beautifully.  You don't have to pull the tomato skins off; they purée completely and make the sauce thick.

The gaps are where I have taken and eaten them over the pan!

I've also been roasting huge pans of veggies, whatever is coming on from the garden and whatever we get in the CSA box.  Today I combined freshly picked peppers-  all colors, onions, eggplant, some cherry tomatoes, carrots, zucchini and beets.  Here is my favorite recipe for roasted vegetables from David Lebovitz's book My Paris Kitchen.  He calls it Baked Provençal Vegetables:

375 oven - large rimmed baking sheet
Cut up all the veggies and pack tightly in the pan in a single layer.  Drizzle on 2 T EV olive oil and sprinkle on fresh or dried thyme to your taste and salt and pepper liberally.  Cover pan snugly with foil and bake 45 min.  Remove foil, sprinkle on some freshly grated Parmesan or Emmenthal cheese and bake uncovered 20-30 minutes more.  Divine!!!  They taste even better the next day. 

Tomatoes, batch 2 of veggies, pot of jam

I also picked a gallon bag of raspberries and blackberries from the Kingston yard this morning and combined it with one I had picked and frozen over a week ago and made razzleberry jam - 11 jars - bippity!  These last 2 days in the kitchen have been totally cheery and cheer.