Porgy and Salad

Saucyman, What have you been cooking? You must be loving all the fruits and veggies that are abounding. - Marketeer

Truth be told, I think autumn is more of my natural cooking season – roasts, squashes, wild mushrooms, apples, those big late season tomatoes are all the better for saucing, pears, cabbages and root veg fit my style of cooking better. Summer isn’t really conducive to having the oven on too much – nor does the heat really encourage the heavy starchy meals that I love – And although this makes Dr. Atkins roll over in his grave, the food pyramid is built on the noble starch.

The better the ingredient, the less you have to do it. You might suspect that not fully employing my craft might be the very thing to make someone kitchen-neurotic, causing them to compensate with strange fusion presentations and odd flourishes but when the food is good and abundant, the show isn’t about the cook…I am confident enough to let the food, not the technique, be the star.

Without any degree of premeditation, the first bit of heat naturally shifted my cooking from the starchcentic meals of fall and the meat & potatoes of deep winter to the produce-focused meals. In the last few weeks there has been rhubarb jam for angel food cake, morels and asparagus, cucumbers and salmon tossed in a sesame-ginger dressing. A salad of red leaf lettuce and hanger steak and glazed beets for lunch and red potatoes tossed in pesto with some really crunchy/chewy bread was dinner. More asparagus this time with peanut sauce, turned in leftovers of asparagus, shrimp and peanut sauce over rice. Salmon cooked in sesame oil, served next to buckwheat noodles cooked in green tea and accompanied by the season’s first squash – young and small enough that it doesn’t have to be called zucchini was also a meal that was directly proportional to the season.

To date, lamb shanks and baby artichokes have been the most seasonal meal of 2009. Sweet peas and garlic shoots were more memorable than what ever I served them with. Although it was baked and wasn’t particularly light, the previously blogged about lasagna was chocked full of spring herbs and veggies. Last week’s there was a tart made of caramelized onions, leeks and shallots topped with goat cheese. A combination of tart and green salad fed me most of the week.

And as tired as I was of that tart, it was nothing to my own personal strawberry festival. There were strawberries, so many strawberries, that I will never eat (or for that matter puree with alcohol & drink) a strawberry ever again. Or if not truly forever, at least until I forget that I ever vowed to do so. Fortunately, cherries are about to land, which means clafoutis. After that excitement blueberries and or peaches are going to be matched to a future mascarpone making experiment. Figs, apricots and plums will all get their turn.

Still, I’m going to vote with Gershwin - the livin is easy in Summertime, while the catfish aren’t jumping the meals are easy and pretty much take care of themselves.