The words are the recipe; heat the squash, then top with cheese and peppers. The initials stand for Very Nearly Instant: about 2 minutes in the microwave, because we almost always have some baked winter squash around.

It’s one of our favorite vegetables: in the garden, where it’s quite easy to grow if you have the space, in the kitchen, of course, and up in the bedroom under the bureaus, where it’s the first thing I see – other than Bill – every morning when I awake.

Terrific way to start the day, actually. No matter how gloomy the weather or discouraging the news, here’s this good sized supply of a beautiful winter staple that’s filling, flavorful, versatile AND (blare of trumpets) requires no refrigeration, canning, freezing or other special preservation. It stays perfectly good at room temperature for an entire season.

Down from the bedroom for their closeup, clockwise from left: Buttercup, Tetsukabuto, Candy Roaster Melon Squash, Queen of Smyrna.

Another big plus for  winter squash is that you can get great ones at the supermarket – as long as you stick to Buttercup you’re unlikely to go wrong.

This being the case, it might seem as though all this crowing around about easy storage is only relevant to those who grow their own. Not so. Delicious is accessible all winter long, but assortment of delicious - spicy,  fruity, meaty, sweet as honey, sweet as chestnuts –  is only available for about a month at harvest time. You don’t have to grow it, but you do have to buy it when the buying’s good.

The squash in the picture are 50/50. We grew the Buttercup, a strain called Uncle David’s Dakota Dessert, and the Tetsukabuto. I bought the Candy Roaster Melon and the Queen of Smyrna at Fresh off the Farm, in Rockport, Maine.

FOFT, in turn, bought them from Wholesome Valley Farms, way up in Smyrna Mills (about 200 miles north, right near the Canadian border).

At this writing I can’t vouch for the Candy Roaster;  we haven’t opened it yet. But I can say the Queen of Smyrna was one of the tastiest squashes I’ve ever eaten (that’s it at the top with the jalapenos) and all I wish – quite fervently – is that I had bought more of them when I had the chance.

As her name suggests, the Queen of Smyrna is profoundly local royalty. When I started looking back in Mid-October, I couldn’t find a single reference, either online or in the massive Seed Savers Yearbook, far and away the largest listing of non-commercial varieties. So I tried calling the listed number for Wholesome Valley Farms, which got me as far as a store called Pioneer Place USA, message central for the colony of Amish farmers who’ve settled in and near Smyrna.

A message was duly left, but that seemed to be the end of the trail. I didn’t hear back.

Until about two weeks ago, when I got a call from Milo Hilty, the farmer who’s working on turning the Queen from a chance mutation into a stable variety.

He’s been at it for about 7 years, ever since an all white fruit was found in a field of something “in the kabocha family,” and he expects to have achieved the goal next year or the year after.

That should put Queen of Smryna seed on the market by roughly 2013. How long it’ll take after that to rocket to its deserved fame I cannot imagine, but if it’s even half as easy to grow as it is to eat,  get ready world – here she comes!

Being as it’s seed catalog time, I’ll mention that I got Uncle David from Fedco Seeds, where Mr. Hilty got the Candy Roaster Melon, an heirloom that’s double-distinctive. Candy Roaster is fairly well known (in the circles that know these things), and seed is sold by several companies that specialize in heirlooms. But Candy Roaster is a banana squash and that’s just what it looks like.

Tetsukabuto, a disquisition for another day, is sold by several companies including Kitazawa Seed and Pinetree Garden Seeds. It’s one of the most popular squashes in Japan, so there’s a chance you might find one to try if you look in markets that specialize in Japanese produce.

Photo note: The Buttercup in the picture doesn’t show the characteristic button on the bottom. Believe me; it’s there.

However

The pie that makes people say “ I thought I hated rhubarb, but this is wonderful!” is Carol’s Mother’s Deep Dish Rhubarb Custard Pie.

Both title and ingredients may raise warning flags to experienced cooks: rhubarb and custard sound like curdled filling just waiting to happen; the custard itself contains enough flour to suggest the result might be more than a tad stodgy. Fear not.

The custard is soft and smooth, and although this pie is far from light, that’s just because it’s big; the flour has nothing to do with it.

All credit goes to my friend Carol – the wine colored dahlia Carol, not the Heath Bar Cookie one.  When she sent me the recipe, back in 1992, she said: “This is straight out of my mother’s copy of the Betty Furness Westinghouse Cookbook (Simon and Schuster, 1954). I just doubled all of the ingredients…” so, with credit where due, Carol’s transmission of

Carol’s Mother’s Betty Furness’ Westinghouse Cookbook Deep Dish Rhubarb Custard Pie

Place in a 9 inch pie-plate (deep dish variety) pastry for a 1-crust pie. Preheat your oven to 400 degrees. The baking time is 50-60 minutes (I’ve found it to be closer to 60 than 50).

Fill the pastry lined plate with 6 C. cut rhubarb. Over this, pour the following mixture: 4 beaten eggs, 4 T. milk, 2.5 C. sugar (white or brown as you like), 6 T. flour, ½ t. salt, ½ t. nutmeg. Then dot with 2 T. butter.

You can add a lattice top, but if you have pretty strawberry rhubarb, you really don’t need that sort of camouflage.

Cooks’ Notes:

1. (Pastry recipe here if needed) The deep dish must be very deep, and it pays to build up the pastry rim to add a bit more height. Even then there may be a bit of custard left over, depending on your pan and how you measure the rhubarb. Stop pouring a bit short of the top or you’ll have custard all over the oven.

2. Size of rhubarb slices isn’t critical, but they should be somewhere around ½ to ¾ inch wide.

3. Custard is smoothest and least inclined to puff over if you mix the dry ingredients first, then stir in the lightly beaten eggs. Brown sugar adds both color and flavor, enriching the experience;  the pie is prettier and clearer-tasting with white. Warning: this custard is very sweet, a real souvenir of the 1950′s. I haven’t experimented with using less sugar – our rhubarb is very tart – but you might want to.

4. I like having the lattice, not so much for decoration as because additional pastry makes a better balanced pie.

5. This bakes so long the bottom crust isn’t as soggy as you might fear, but it will be crisper if you use a baking stone as described in the recipe for Maple Walnut Pie (which is very good served frozen, btw, should you be looking for an excuse to make one for summer consumption).

6. If you do have extra custard, see it as a bonus. Pour it into a greased dish that it will fill halfway, add some more rhubarb and put the leftover pastry (lattice always leaves a little) around the edge and over the top. Bake for 20 to 30 minutes, depending on the dish, and keep the little pudding at home when you take the pie to the party.

This little pudding also includes a few lumps of ricotta - there wasn't that much leftover custard and I wanted to have enough for both of us.

Orange and Avocado salad, one way to use up the oranges.

Needing to “use up” oranges might sound like a fake problem, but those of us who’d rather eat clementines and drink grapefruits often have a lot of orange meat with no particular place to go.

Meanwhile, we have a nice supply of deep red radicchio, which turned out to be the last green standing. Covering the row on December 1st was definitely worth it. They were still out there doing fine when we brought in the last chard and kale

The kale and chard came in in mid-December. (The blue bucket holds beets)

And they were still ok, just a bit less fine, when I went out the other day and got the rest of them, no longer willing to tempt fate, snow insulation notwithstanding.

How convenient is that? Bitter endive and sweet-sour orange is one of the world’s great combinations; all you need is a little fat and salt and you’re in business.

This one has green “Pan de Zucchero', aka ‘Sugarloaf’ or 'Sugarhat' chicory, beets and walnuts in addition to the basic oranges and onions.

TO PREPARE WHOLE ORANGES FOR SALADS:

The fruit is prettiest when sliced crosswise into thin disks, but this has two culinary disadvantages. It doesn’t remove the tough membranes, and it does bust so many cells a lot of the juice leaks out.

For best eating quality, make sections: Working over a bowl to catch all the juices, use a sharp, serrated knife to slice off the top and bottom of the orange. Score the peel at one inch intervals from top to bottom,then go back and cut it off, slicing just deeply enough to remove all the white pith. (Scoring makes it easier to remove all pith while losing minimum flesh.)

Cut down right next to each membrane, freeing the wedges of orange, and remove any stray seeds. If there are more than a few seeds, make all the wedges first and go back for seed removal at the end; it’s faster.

When the sections have been removed you’ll be left holding a limp rag of connected membranes. Squeeze it over the bowl to get all the juice before discarding.

Basic Orange and Endive Salad

The salads in the pictures are composed for their portraits. When composing for eating it’s much better to cut most components in bite-sized pieces, shred the endive as though for slaw and toss the whole thing at the end. Salad that you need a knife to eat is not my idea of a good time.

Basic ingredients are in bold italics. Quantity of each is “as much as you want,” but I usually have about 2 cups diced orange wedges and 1/2  cup shredded sweet onion for every 6 cups of  shredded endive. Amount of vinaigrette needed depends on how much else is in the salad and how absorbent it is. You need more if there are garbanzo beans, less if there’s crumbled bacon.

Method: Cut onion into shreds. If you thought of making this a few hours ahead, generously salt the shreds, let them pickle for however long, then rinse in cold water and drain thoroughly. This treatment makes them less sulferous but isn’t essential.

In a large salad bowl, make a simple olive oil and mid-price balsamic vinegar dressing. Season with salt. This may be the only dish outside of dessert that I like better without garlic, but that’s me.

Stir the onions into the dressing, then stir in whatever non-orange lumps (if any) you’re using. Marinate a half hour or so if possible. Add the oranges and their juice, stir gently and taste for seasoning. Toss with the endive and serve.

Tasty Lumps to add:

Beets

Avocado

Roasted, peeled red peppers

Garbanzo beans

Sausage – that last little broiled merguez, for instance, currently languishing in the ‘fridge

Shrimp

Also:

Oil-cured black olives

Roasted, peeled Poblano peppers

Toasted nuts

Crumbled bacon

Very tiny croutons

Good to the last leaf

Makes me sad just to think of it, or would if we hadn’t been apple hunting for months, munching, baking and – three cheers for an old fashioned farmhouse with side porches! – stocking up. Some of what’s currently stashed in a small space we try to keep right above freezing (heirlooms with approximate intro date):

Left to right: Wolf River (1875), Cameo, Winesap (1817), Northern Spy (1800), Pink Lady, Stayman (1895), Zabergau Reinette (1885), Tolman Sweet (pre-1822), Golden Russet (pre-1845)

Apple collecting tips and pie recipe after the jump

The Tolman and Zabergau are sort of cheating – I got them from a specialist grower at the Great Maine Apple Day and wouldn’t be surprised to hear there was no other commercial source. But baker’s delight Wolf River is still around, in a farmstand sort of way, and we got the Winesaps, Spys, and Russets at a large-scale direct sale orchard: Jenkins – Lueken, in New Paltz, NY, which also sold us the Cameos and Pink Ladys and the Honeycrisps that you don’t see because we’ve already eaten them all and will have to go get more. (J&K is open ’till Christmas)

Some people compile life lists of birds; we’re working on apple varieties. Any autumn trip is a chance to find a new orchard or even – well, we did hit one once – a private house with a sign in the yard selling heirloom apples from inherited trees.

There’s nothing wrong with chickadees, but they do have an everyday quality compared to red headed woodpeckers and indigo buntings. Mcintosh is a good apple but it’s not in Honeycrisp’s class, never mind Zabergau Reinette’s.

Carpe Apple, in other words. Comparatively unusual types like Rome (1848), Empire and Jonagold will soon be in short supply; a fresh Mcintosh (1870) is far tastier than one from storage; and rare birds like the Russets and Spies are about to be just plain gone until next year. There’s source finding help at  All About Apples,  which offers an orchard locator that covers the whole US. Don’t miss the huge, amazing, inspiring- who knew? – variety list, the apple hunters’ Audubon field guide.  

ALWAYS RIGHT APPLE PIE

The crust is always crisp, never soggy. The apples are exactly as tender as you like them to be. And the very last piece is always as fresh tasting as the first, even if there are only two of you and eating the pie takes 3 days.

How can this be? Deconstruction. Bake the apples, covered for maximum pielikeness, uncovered for stand-alone flavor. Bake the crust on a cookie sheet, in decorative shapes that can be added at will. 

Then simply assemble “pies” as needed. Large when it’s Thanksgiving or something, small when it’s just you and your pie and possibly your diet.

Apple Pie assembly style

single portion apple pie (that's a Cameo, btw, they're champion shape holders)

Vanilla Rum Syrup for Baked Apples

For about 2 cups, enough for 6 to 8 apples if each has its own baking dish, for 8 to 10 if they’re all in the same pan:

2 cups water

1 cup sugar

3 inch piece of vanilla bean, split

1 tablespoon lemon juice

2-3 tablespoons dark rum

Put sugar, water and vanilla bean in a heavy saucepan over medium heat. Cook, stirring frequently, until sugar is dissolved, then lower heat to a simmer and cook until you have a thin syrup, about 5 minutes. Let it cool, then stir in the lemon juice and rum.

That’s it. Thin with a little water or cider if your apples are dry or you want a lot of sauce to soak the crust in so you can recreate the sog layer you’d get in the conventional version. Syrup will keep tightly covered in the fridge for about a month, getting more and more strongly vanilla flavored if you leave the bean pieces in.

If you must store strawberries for more than a couple of hours, spread them out on a paper-towel lined plate so mold and bruises can’t travel.

The Theory Part

“ Doubtless God could have made a better berry, but doubtless God never did.” (Samuel Butler, at some point in the late 16^th century.*)

“Doubtless the cooks who have gone before could have devised a better strawberry dessert, but doubtless they never did.” ( me, at this point in 2008, after trying many vintage recipes before settling on the shortcake that follows).

A Few Shortcake Rules:

Old fashioned strawberry shortcake is always made on a biscuit base.

The best way to make it is as often as possible, and

the best way to eat it is the old fashioned way, front and center for supper.

Della Lutes gives the flavor of the thing in The Country Kitchen, a memoir of life in rural Michigan in the 1870’s that was published ( by Little, Brown and Company) in 1936

“ My mother made strawberry shortcake in a small dripping pan and of a very rich biscuit dough…When this was baked to flaky perfection it was turned onto a platter and split in two. The top half was laid aside and the bottom part lavishly spread with butter. Over this the berries (already crushed in a blue and white porcelain bowl) were thickly poured. Then the top half was laid over this, fulsomely buttered, while the remainder of the berries completely canopied the whole. The juice ran off and made a crimson lake in which the shortcake rested. It was then set in the oven to ‘ripen’ for a few minutes. A pitcher of cream on the table acted as accompaniment for those who wanted it.

When we had shortcake we had but little else, nor  needed more…”

Although I distantly remember shortcake for supper from my own youth in Pennsylvania, until I read the Lutes book I always assumed it was a New England thing. So I asked food historian Sandy Oliver, an expert in 19^th Century New England foodways.

She wasn’t sure. There is some evidence, she said, citing an 18th century diary, but not enough to go making pronouncements. Nevertheless. The diarist was from Newburyport and Sandy, who is from Cornwall, Connecticut, may be living proof. “ I know that my mother considered it supper. My father, who was raised in Nyack, did not,” she said.

The practice

This blog’s earlier guidance on strawberries and shortcake-making, including stern words about biscuits and my usual recipe, may be found here, and here.

My current favorite is from Lowney’s Cook Book ( 1907), by Maria Willett Howard. 

1907 STRAWBERRY SHORTCAKE

Shortcake

2 cups flour

½ teaspoon salt

3 teaspoons baking powder

3 tablespoons butter

3 tablespoons lard

1 cup milk

   Mix and sift the dry ingredients. Add butter and lard and chop until thoroughly blended. Add milk. When thoroughly mixed, divide in halves; put each half into a round, buttered cake tin. Flour hand and pat to fit the tin. Bake ten to twelve minutes in hot oven. Separate the upper portions from the lower portions of each cake with a fork – never cut with a knife. Spread with butter, fill with filling, and arrange in layers, with filling between.

Strawberry Shortcake

Hull, cut in pieces, and sweeten two boxes of strawberries. Let them stand several hours. Arrange between layers of shortcake and garnish top with whole strawberries and beaten and sweetened cream.

    Raspberry, Blackberry and Pineapple may be made in a similar way.

Department of further explanation:

* If you can’t get good lard (the supermarket stuff is awful), use all butter – and start looking around for lard so you’ll be ready when it’s apple pie season. 

* mixing thoroughly makes tough cake. Just be sure all the dry ingredients are dampened.

* The hot oven is about 425 degrees. The cake tins would have been shallower than modern cake pans. Use 8 inch tart pans and if all you have are fluted ones don’t worry about the cakes coming out neatly. Just cut around the rim as necessary to loosen;  with all the strawberries and cream nobody will notice.

* Nobody will notice if the layers are less than perfect either, just piece the bits together as needed. There may be more bits than anything else if you try to use a fork; and in my opinion the slight improvement in texture isn’t worth the aggravation. It’s hard enough to keep them reasonably whole when you use a serrated knife.

* Spreading the layers with butter might seem a bit over the top. It is not.

* Two boxes of strawberries is 2 quarts and you need them all for the filling; if you want to garnish with whole berries you’ll need another pint.

* Can’t find the original date for “Doubtless God etc.”. The only reason we know these deathless – and endlessly quoted – words is because the original quoter was Izaak Walton, in The Compleat Angler (1653), probably the world’s most famous book about fishing. I base my approximation on the fact that Butler died in 1618, at the age of 85. 

A smooth puree, accented with tender-crisp asparagus coins. Just the thing for these oxymoronic hot spring days, when it’s officially asparagus season but experientially August. We’ve stopped cutting but I see there’s still reasonably local asparagus in the stores.

Cold Asparagus Soup with Crunchy Coins - 

Follow the recipe that uses the asparagus ends, but in step 1, chop half the tender asparagus and cut the other half into thin coins.Add only the chopped part in step 4. 

Puree the soup as directed in step 5. Return it to the pan and reheat just to the boil. Add the coins, cover, turn off the heat and let the soup cool to room temperature. Chill thoroughly.

At serving time, whip the cream. Taste the soup, correct the salt and divide into chilled serving bowls. Put a generous dollop of cream on top, swirl it in and serve.

Upstairs: Food Historian Sandy Oliver keeps winter squash under the bed. Bottom of the linen closet is also good; just don’t forget they’re there.

Downstairs: An unheated basement ( 35 to 45 degrees) , a second refrigerator ( or the back of the one in the kitchen) is almost a root cellar. Things to keep in it from harvest to spring: Beets, Carrots, Cabbages, Onions, Wine, Beer, Cheese.

In a cool back bedroom or similar: Potatoes. They like to be cold, but not quite as cold as other roots.

In the pantry/ food cupboard:
Dried: Wild bolete mushrooms, wild or cultivated agaricus mushrooms, tomatoes, shell beans.
Canned: Applesauce, fruit spreads, ketchup, tomatoes, roasted tomatoes for instant sauce.

In the garden: lightly mulched Parsley and Kale will survive until a very hard freeze (@ 26 degrees); the more slowly it gets cold, the more cold they can take. Chard, Brussels sprouts and Broccoli raab aren’t quite as hardy but still can stand – indeed benefit from – repeated light freezes. Many gardening and country food books, including some of mine, suggest leaving beets and carrots in the ground under a heavy mulch and then harvesting as needed. It works fine if you don’t have voles.

In the freezer: Wild mushrooms (morel, chanterelle, sulfur shelf, blewit, hen of the woods) sautéed in enough butter to be a sauce for the pasta, baked potato, winter squash or other starch that is then dinner; Toasted almond pesto or other pesto to use like the mushrooms ; Berries; Whole tomatoes for soup and sauce; Full-meal soups like Minestrone and Corn chowder, Harvest Vegetable Stews like corn, squash and pepper/ tomato, pepper and onion/ snap and shell beans with summer squash. Chickens. Your quarter of a local lamb, pig or steer, divided into the cuts you’ve ordered. Make an inventory and keep it near the freezer!( along with a pen on a string for crossing off)

Incipient minestrone, partly gathered from my garden but not all of it because I don’t grow kale, potatoes, shell beans or carrots.

SEPTEMBER SUNSHINE MINESTRONE (aka) Harvest Vegetable Soup

This is a very general guideline; as long as you start with the flavored broth, include both starchy and delicate vegetables and use enough of them to make the soup hearty without turning it into stew, you’re in business.

Classic recipes include pasta or rice and I used to too. But now I don’t, because flexibility trumps the tiny gain in convenience you get from freezing the soup “complete.” There’s usually leftover cooked pasta or rice lying around in the fridge and when there isn’t we just use more good bread – French or Italian, generally – which IS always lying around and may be the most delicious choice anyway.

For about 12 main dish ( large ) servings:

1/3 pound lean salt pork or fatty bacon, cut in 1 inch chunks

3 large cloves garlic

½ loosely-piled cup flat-leaf parsley, leaves and tender stems

grated zest of 1 lemon

1 large onion, cut in small dice

3 quarts water – quality matters. Use filtered if your tap is chlorinated

3-4 cups root vegetables, cut in roughly ¾ inch chunks. Carrots and potatoes mostly, some parsnip and/or turnip if you like but not too much as both of these are rather aggressive.

2 cups fresh shell beans

½ cup celery in medium slices. Not thin. Not chunks.

2 cups firm summer squash, crookneck or small zucchini, cut in roughly ½ inch slices . Halve the squash the long way first if they’re more than about an inch thick.

1 ½ cups snap beans ( Romanos are lovely if you can find them) cut in 1 inch lengths.

3 cups ripe tomatoes, peeled and coarsely chopped

About 3 cups chopped kale or savoy cabbage

A good sized handful each chopped Italian parsley and basil

1. Chop pork, garlic and the half-cup parsley until it looks like hamburger – the processor is fastest ( if you don’t have to wash it by hand).

2. Put the olive oil in a heavy kettle over low heat, add the pork mixture and lemon rind and cook, stirring, until most of the pork fat is released. Add the onion and keep cooking until it is wilted and starting to turn gold.

3. Add the water and bring to a boil. Put in the root vegetables and shell beans, adjust the heat so the liquid just simmers and cook until the vegetables are about half done – no longer crisp but still somewhat tooth-resistant, 15 to 20 minutes.

4. Add celery, squash, snap beans and tomatoes and cook until the roots are tender and the snap beans are al dente, about 20 minutes more.

5. Now the kale and cooking until it’s tender, 10 to 15 minutes. Add the herbs. Let them wilt, then taste and adjust the salt.

6. Serve with pesto – your own, pistachio (scroll down to find it) or Toasted Almond (below), a better choice for freezing. Freshly grated Parmesan is traditional but if you have good local hard cheese why not experiment? You can also skip the cheese entirely or switch it 180 for an entirely new taste treat. Sprinkle some small chunks of young mozzarella over the hot soup as soon as you ladle it into the bowls. It should be somewhere between soft and melted when everyone starts eating.

Note: this produces a soup that’s just barely done, on the theory that it is going to be frozen, which softens things, then reheated, which softens them some more. If you’re planning to eat it right away, cook until the kale is almost falling apart before you add the herbs.

TOASTED ALMOND PESTO

As usual, quantities are just guidelines. Even more than usual, actually, given the difficulty of measuring fresh leaves and the enormous variability of fresh herbs. The goal is to have a fairly even mixture of almond and parsley flavors, with a strong accent of basil and a mild accent of garlic.

To make lots of this for freezing, make multiple batches; the processor heats up the pesto if you ask it to grind too much. The multiples go very fast since you don’t have to wash the processor between them.

For a scant cup, about 8 servings depending on what you’re doing with it:

1/3 cup toasted almonds. (see note about skins)

2 medium sized cloves of garlic – use large if it’s hardneck.

1/3 cup olive oil

2 loosely packed cups chopped Italian parsley, leaves and tender stems.

1 loosely packed cup basil leaves

2 or 3 leaves of sorrel or a squeeze of lemon

pinch of salt

1. Put almonds and garlic in a processor and grind, scraping down the sides from time to time, until you have fine meal. Add about a third of the oil and a teaspoon of water and grind again until you have a paste – it won’t be smooth, but it will be cohesive.

2. Add the herbs (lemon juice) and salt and about a tablespoon of water. Grind to puree. Add the remaining oil and puree again. The pesto should have the texture of thick mayonnaise. If it’s still too solid, add water in very small amounts until it’s right. The more water you add, the more beautiful the color will be. Try not to get too carried away.

Note: The most delicious way to make this is to toast the almonds in their skins; dump them into boiling water; simmer for about 3 minutes, then leave them in the hot water while you work with small batches at a time, pinching the skins off. The boiling not only loosens the skins but also softens the nuts so they grind to a smoother paste. This is not fast work.

In theory, you could buy blanched almonds, toast them, then just give them a brief swim to soften, but blanched almonds – including those hotsy totsy Marcona almonds – don’t taste as good as almonds in the skins. Must be something about the industrial blanching process. I just use the toasted almonds and leave it at that. (If you soften the almonds in their skins and then try to grind them without peeling, the skins don’t grind smoothly with the nuts).

(Squash Tortilla. See below.)

Long about now you may be thinking you’ve totally had it with zucchini, even absolutely perfect zucchini, and that if you find under the leaves or are given by an evil friend one more dark green baseball bat, you will subsist henceforth on potato chips.

But stay! There are two things to consider:

1) There’s no point in trying to stay ahead by harvesting the babies. Tiny squash with the blossoms still attached don’t taste like much of anything no matter how fresh they are.

The one on the left is about 1 day from perfect; the flower is just opening and has not yet been pollinated. The one on the right – I really have seen them this size in stores – is ridiculous. It would also be ridiculous if it were a crookneck or Cousa. The potential for flavor is there, but flavor itself is not.

2. You will not easily tire of zucchini if it’s Romanesco, aka Costata Romanesco, a uniquely firm and nutty variety. This one does taste good when it’s quite small and, even more astonishing, the not-seedy part will still be worth eating when the thing’s the size of your forearm.

The one in the middle looks suspiciously robust, and as a general rule it’s wise to avoid any summer squash (or eggplant) so mature it has matte rather than shiny skin. But Romanesco, sold by Johnny’s and by Renee’s, among others, is the exception.

Plus it’s deeply ribbed ( usually) so the slices have beautifully scalloped edges. It’s not yet common at farmstands and greenmarkets, but it’s showing up more and more often as growers and customers alike discover its virtues.

Squash Tortilla

This has nothing to do with tacos. It’s named for the famous Spanish dish of potatoes, eggs and olive oil; and although it’s made somewhat similarly the main reason I’m calling it a tortilla is that I was scared if I called it a squash cake you’d expect it to be sweet.

It’s not. It’s essence of toothsome squash, with a soft pale green or gold-flecked center and deeply olive oil browned crust, equally good hot and cold, as an appetizer, side dish or main course. And making it is simplicity itself, assuming you have a processor with a shredding attachment and that you allow enough time (at least an hour) for the squash to sit there and drain.

For a 9 or 10 inch tortilla: 4 main dish, 6 side dish or 8 tapa servings :

3 – 4 lbs. summer squash: zucchini, Middle-East , crookneck or pattypan in any combination. Use the larger amount if squash are large; they shrink more in preparation.

1 medium onion

2 heaping tablespoons of salt (fear not, it comes back out)

3 extra large eggs or 4 smaller ones

about ¼ cup of flour

olive oil

1. If the squash is large, cut it in quarters and slice out the seedy soft center material. Otherwise just make it small enough to go through the feed tube. Shred about half of it, then shred the onion, then shred the rest. Put all the shredded material in a large bowl.

Old ironstone washbowls are ideal for mixing large quantities. They’re a much better shape than most mixing bowls, which are too narrow and deep.

2. Add the salt and mix thoroughly – your hands are the best tool for this. Put the squash in a colander over the sink or or a bowl, fit a non-reactive bowl or pan on top and weight it with something like a 5 pound sack of flour. Leave it for an hour or so, during which vast quantities of liquid will come out, reducing the squash volume by 1/3 to ½, depending.

3. Rinse the drained squash with cold running water, press out excess liquid with your palm, then repeat the weighted drain routine for 5 or 10 minutes. If you’re cooking this for someone you want to impress with your world-class cooking skills, turn the shreds into a towel and squeeze out even more moisture. Otherwise don’t bother.

4. Beat the eggs just until loosened in a large bowl, then stir in the squash. Add enough flour to turn the mixture into something the texture of cake batter, very soft and loose but with no free liquid. Pause between additions to let the flour swell, the less you use the better but if you don’t use enough the bottom crust won’t be crisp.

5. Put a heavy 9 or 10 inch skillet over medium heat and add a generous layer of olive oil. How generous is up to you but there has to be more than a slick and this would actually be good deep fried, so it’s hard to use too much.

6. When the oil just starts to smoke, turn in the squash and smooth the top. Cook until the edges start to draw in and if you lift an edge with a spatula you can see things are pretty brown at the bottom. This should take about 10 minutes.

7. Turn on the broiler, put the skillet 3 (or so ) inches under it and broil until the cake top is flecked with brown, about 5 minutes more.

8. Loosen the cake with a wide spatula. Put a large plate over the pan and – holding both firmly with protected hands – flip the tortilla out. That’s it. You could garnish it with sprigs of basil or bouquets of cherry tomatoes or whatever. Or not.

Looking Ahead: There aren’t many vegetables worth freezing plain as ingredients for later use; but if you get a good buy on good summer squash or have a bumper crop, preparing it through step 3 and then freezing it sets you up for making the tortilla (or individual squash pancakes) with lightening speed, even in the dead of winter. Double bag the shreds so the onion aroma doesn’t spread itself around and expect to drain out even more liquid after the mixture thaws.

Fair warning: I’m in strawberry delirium at the moment. We (well, Bill actually) got a big bowl of them for Father’s Day from Karen, Celia’s mother, and they were the Platonic ideal: firm but tender, very juicy, flavorful, sweet, and FRAGRANT? Omigosh. They perfumed the entire kitchen all afternoon, until I made them into shortcake – a subject about which I feel strongly – recipe coming next post. Biscuits, only biscuits, do not talk to me about cake.

Karen with home-grown gift

Or don’t bother to talk about making anything. When you get strawberries this good all you need to do is eat them. The part that takes effort is acquisition.

Getting industrial strawberries is easy; like industrial tomatoes they’re available everywhere always. And all of the tomato wisdom about far tastier when fresh and local certainly applies. But with strawberries ” vine-ripened” matters far more because strawberries – unlike tomatoes – cannot continue to ripen after they leave the plant.

They do get softer as they age ( except the gigantic iron strawberries sold for chocolate-dipping). But they don’t get any sweeter or more intensely flavorful. Whatever goodness they have when they’re picked, that’s all they’ll ever have.

Yet ripe strawberries are fragile and short-lived. Result: only berries that need not travel far or change hands often can be allowed to ripen fully. And only growers who sell locally can risk growing “home garden” varieties known more for flavor than durability.

So if you crave strawberry delerium – and don’t happen to know Karen – the places to get fruit are farmers markets, pick-your-own farms, and your own back yard.

Karen got her plants from a friend and doesn’t know their name, but these look a lot like Sparkle, a home garden variety introduced in 1942 and still popular in the Northeast, the region where it does best.

At the Market: go for sprightly green calyces ( the cap of leaves at the top) and stems that are fresh-looking. Don’t be put off by small berries or berries that aren’t all the same size; many of the tastiest varieties are neither large nor uniform. Some very sweet berries are not dark red, but if they’re light it doesn’t hurt to ask for a taste. And beware of super deep color too; the berries may be so close to overripe they’ll melt before you get them home.

At Pick-your-own farms: Try to get there either at the beginning or toward the end of the day. In many places people make side money picking at these farms and selling the fruit for a small profit. They show up early; they know what they’re doing; and they’re fast. By the time they leave, a lot of the fruit that was ripe at daybreak will be leaving with them. Fortunately, they seldom come back for a second round and strawberries can ripen in a matter of hours. On hot days late afternoon can offer great picking, especially when the weather is so brutal it discourages the competition.

In the Garden: Strawberries are already among the easiest fruits to grow, and if Colony Collapse Disorder continues they’re going to be an even better bet. In contrast to most other soft fruits, strawberries don’t rely primarily on honey bees; our native wild bees pollinate a lot of them and can continue to do so – assuming, of course, our native bees are still around themselves…

A disquisition for another day. To return to our berries,

Choosing plants:

Leaving aside specialty berries like fraises des bois, there are 3 types to consider: June bearers, everbearers and day neutrals. For descriptions of individual varieties consult plant sellers like Nourse Farms and Daisy Farms.

June Bearers – might better be called “once bearers.” They make a single large crop in spring and that’s it. They’re the original “garden strawberry,” the tastiest of the large-fruited types, and the one that offers far and away the widest choice of varieties.

Everbearers – their better name is “twice bearers,” one crop in spring and another, smaller crop in fall, with only a few berries here and there in between. Quality varies widely and is strongly climate dependant. Be sure you choose one that’s right for your region.

Day Neutrals – keep fruiting from spring to fall, with the largest and tastiest fruit often coming as the weather cools down. Berries tend to be on the small side but there are a lot when you add up a whole season’s worth.

Strawberry shortcake, made with biscuits. Recipe coming soon to a blog near you.