Love Apple

Love apple is a fitting description for a fruit with smooth firm skin and luscious ripe flesh exuding an enticing smell and offering the promise of infinite ways to be devoured. There is no vegetable, well technically a fruit, that can quite compare to a homegrown tomato. Many of us go to great lengths to grow them. I am no exception.

Each year I follow the same ritual of choosing the varieties, preparing the beds, planting, laying in the irrigation, mulching, and building the supports. My husband thinks I’m a bit nuts but he’s not a big tomato fan…yet. Although I am an advocate of heirloom varieties I plant hybrid varieties too. Most of the varieties I choose are indeterminate because I have the space for them to grow as big as they like. Each year I build a support structure of bamboo poles and twine. My husband has dubbed it “The Hanoi Hilton” but it is a strong scaffold that keeps the vines off the ground and protected from animals. It also makes harvesting the fruit easier.

Brandywine and Orange Oxheart are two of my favorite heirloom variety tomatoes. These are varieties that my grandmother or even her mother could have planted. Brandywine is in the photo at the top of this post and as you can see it is large, oddly lobe shaped, and cracks easily. But it has a sweet, rich, intense tomato flavor to which most other tomatoes are compared.

Orange Oxheart is a large yellow variety that is actually heart shaped. It is juicy and meaty with fewer seeds and less acidic flavor. It’s a great counterpoint in color and flavor to its red cousins.

At the end of this productive summer I have made countless fresh salsas, Caprese salads, and sauces. I have canned a few jars of pasta sauce and frozen a few tomatoes to add to soup this winter. I lament the looming threat of the first hard frost and the last fresh tomato. That makes the tomatoes I harvest in September, and if the weather cooperates, October that much more precious.


So to do justice to heirloom tomatoes here is an heirloom recipe with a bit more family history in explanation. This photo is Aunt Sophia holding my Mom in about 1915.

My mother’s Aunt Sophia (pronounced So-fee by her niece) has become a culinary legend in our family. Aunt Sophia was my grandmother’s older sister. She never married but dedicated herself to helping my grandparents farm and raise their family. She was the cook of the household, keeping the hearth fires burning while the rest of the family worked the fields or went to school. She died a decade and a half before I was born. I have a few of her recipes written out but most of her legacy has come to me through demonstrations by my Mom who was her kitchen apprentice. I grew up eating this tomato salad. It is classic Aunt Sophia--ingredients at the peak of ripeness with simple preparation. Nothing can be more enduring.

Aunt Sophia’s Tomato Salad

2 pounds fresh homegrown tomatoes, sliced horizontally
I like to use at least two varieties of tomatoes.

1 small red onion, sliced very thin

½ cup cider vinegar

2 teaspoons sugar

½ teaspoon salt

½ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

In a small bowl mix the vinegar, sugar, salt, and pepper. In a larger bowl put the sliced tomatoes and onion. Pour the vinegar mixture over the tomatoes and allow to marinate for about 10 minutes.

Okra

Okra is a recent introduction to our family garden. No one in the family had heard of the vegetable until my uncle and his family visited friends in Georgia who served it fried in the traditional Southern way. The next summer my aunt planted some okra in her garden and our family has liked the green fuzzy pods with their slippery interiors ever since.

Okra is thought to have it’s origin in Ethiopia and the Upper Nile River valley. A Spanish Moor visiting Egypt in 1216 described the plant and noted that the young pods were eaten with meal in a preparation similar to my favorite way to cook them. It is assumed that French colonists and African slaves brought okra to the American South in the early 1700s.

My family discovered okra a couple of hundred years later in the 1970s. A member of the cotton family, okra is a slightly exotic plant for my Midwestern garden but our summers are hot and humid enough to make it produce well. I need to harvest the young pods when they are three to five inches long at least every three days to keep them from growing too large and getting tough.

If you look closely at the photo you can see a white spot on the soil and a black shape behind the leaves above it. That is Tommy. He loves to accompany me to the garden.

He is quite the hunter bringing us mice and birds almost daily. I have not figured out if he seeks out my company in the garden because he knows he can get some quality petting from me or if he us using my presence as protection from dive bombing mocking birds.

We like to eat okra sliced vertically, rolled in cornmeal and fried or sliced in rings and cooked in soups and gumbo.

Fried Okra

1 pound fresh okra

¾ cup flour, divided

1 cup milk or buttermilk

¾ cup cornmeal

Salt, black pepper, and cayenne pepper to taste


Wash the pods, cut off the stem, and slice them vertically.

Set out three large pie plates.

In plate one put about one half cup flour

In plate two put one cup milk or buttermilk

In plate three put the remaining flour, the cornmeal, and the seasonings

Roll the sliced okra in the flour, then the milk, then the seasoned cornmeal. Use one hand in the wet ingredients and the other hand in the dry ingredients to avoid breading your fingers. If you run short on any of the ingredients in the pie plates just add more during the process.

Lay the breaded okra on a baking sheet to dry while you heat vegetable oil in a skillet or fryer to 350 degrees. I test the oil by dropping a piece of breading into it. If the test piece bubbles and browns quickly it’s ready. Fry the pieces golden brown and drain on paper towels.

My husband introduced me to green Tabasco sauce. I think it is a wonderful condiment to serve with fried okra. It adds a wonderful glow to the crunchy exterior and juicy interior of the okra.

Raspberries

Raspberries are my husband Dave’s favorite fruit. I think. We’ve been married just under two years and we are still learning each others likes and dislikes but I think I can safely say raspberries rank right up there on his top ten list.

Early this past March my cousin Kay told us that she was going to divide some of her red raspberries and asked if we would like a few plants. Dave immediately said yes and offered to help me prepare a bed for them. We planted about six plants. I didn’t expect to have any fruit on the canes this summer but much to our surprise I have been picking a handful of the ruby gems every few days. Even though our canes are young we have an abundant supply of berries because Kay, knowing Dave’s berry preference, arrives on our door step with cardboard flats filled with the fragile, juicy jewels when her plants are at their peak of production.

I spread fresh berries on a sheet pan and freeze them as in the photo below. When they are frozen I put them in freezer bags and return them to the freezer. Then it's easy to use part of the bag for a recipe.

Dave puts fresh red raspberries in one of my grandmother’s Depression glass custard cups, smothers them with heavy cream and devours them. Between making happy noises he reminisces about the summers he spent at his family’s cabin in Canada where his grandmother and aunt introduced him to the pleasures of fresh berries with cream. Should there be any fresh berries left after Dave is finished I set aside enough for this simple but amazing cake recipe. I found this recipe in a magazine many years ago and make it whenever I have a lot of fresh raspberries.

Raspberry Cake

2 cups all-purpose flour

½ teaspoon salt

1 Tablespoon baking powder

1/3 cup butter, at room temperature

¾ cup brown sugar

1 egg, at room temperature

1 cup milk

1 teaspoon vanilla

3 cups fresh raspberries, whole, unsweetened

Glaze:

1 ½ cups confectioner’s sugar

2 Tablespoons heavy cream

1 teaspoon vanilla

Grease and flour a 13 x 9 x 2 inch pan. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

Stir together the flour, salt, and baking powder; set aside. With a mixer cream the softened butter then add the sugar gradually, beating well after each addition until mixture is fluffy and light. Stir in egg; beat one minute. Combine milk and vanilla. Add dry ingredients alternately with milk mixture, beating well after each addition. Spread the batter in the pan. Sprinkle the berries evenly over the top of the batter. Bake for 35-40 minutes until the center of the cake springs back when lightly touched and a tooth pick comes out clean. While the cake is baking combine the glaze ingredients. Allow the cake to cool 5 minutes then spread the glaze over the cake. Serve warm.

The original recipe says this makes 16-20 servings but I have yet to meet the person who can stop at one piece.

Lil' Loupes

Early last spring when I stuck the seeds for Lil ’Loupe in peat pots and put them in the sunny south facing window of my garden shed I didn’t know what to expect. I had never grown this melon before but the description in Territorial Seed Company’s catalog intrigued me. It was described as single-serving sized with firm, sweet, bright orange flesh that packs full-size flavor.

The seeds took off quickly and the seedlings did so well that I didn’t have room in my garden to plant all of them so I gave a couple plants away. Once planted in the garden the vines took off twining and producing little yellow blossoms that first turned into tiny melons the size of my index finger nail and then into melons the size of a large grapefruit at maturity.

I have been picking one to three a week for a few weeks now. The catalog was right. They are firm and juicy and their deep peachy-orange flesh is very sweet. They are the perfect size to fit in the refrigerator and eat half for breakfast or lunch, which is what I have been doing. If I am lucky and the vines stay healthy I might just have Lil’ Loupes through September.

I have the same theory for cantaloupes as I have for watermelons. Pick them ripe from the vine, refrigerate them until they are cold, and the only other thing you need is a spoon.

Sugar Baby

My Sugar Babies aren’t exactly babies this year. They have been weighing in at around 12 pounds and are about a foot in diameter. They have dark green skin with even darker stripes and juicy ruby red flesh. I have been cutting them in half to make it easier to wedge them into my refrigerator. Sugar Baby is a variety that is supposed to be the standard of the icebox melons, meaning they are smaller so they will easily fit into a refrigerator. Not this year.

Watermelons are thought to have originated in the African desert. There is evidence that watermelons were cultivated in the Nile Valley as early as 2000 BC. Watermelon seeds were found in Pharaoh Tutankhamun’s Egyptian tomb. Early French explorers found Native Americans cultivating them in the Mississippi Valley in the 1700s. Some watermelon seeds also found their way to America on ships full of African slaves.

Watermelons are more than ninety percent—you guessed it—water! So they make great slushies, watermelon lemonade, sorbet, fruit salad, and pickled watermelon rind. I have even found a recipe for watermelon cake that uses chunks of the melon in the cake but I’m a bit skeptical about it. In spite of all the wonderful recipes out there I have never gotten past this simple one:

One cold, deep pink wedge of vine ripened watermelon

Paper towels or napkins

Plate, knife, fork, and spoon optional

And for those misguided folks like my Mom and cousin—

Salt!

Schnippel Beans

Most kinds of beans that are commonly eaten when their pods are still unripe or ‘green’ are thought to have originated in the tropical and subtropical latitudes of the Americas. You can find the modern varieties of green bush beans in my Mid-American garden every summer and on some hot and humid August days it feels like the subtropics.

Growing up Mom and I planted, weeded, picked, tipped and tailed, blanched, and served green beans fresh or froze the extra. I love their fresh crunch and sweet green flavor raw or lightly steamed. My dad preferred his beans cooked with bacon, or smothered in sauce, or in salad with vinegar dressing. I recall one summer dinner that included green beans. My Dad, his face, forearms, and hands burnished by the summer sun, was gathering a fork full of green bean salad from his dinner plate.
Addressing my Mom with a wistful tone to his German accent he announced,

“My Mom used to schnippel (meaning to cut) beans in long thin strips. She used to do big pots full. Why don’t you fix beans like that?”

My Mom gave him ‘the look’. ‘The look’ is only understood by women who have had to listen to their husbands explaining a dish their mother prepared when they were growing up. If it was a particular favorite some of us go to the trouble of getting the recipe from our mother-in-law but in my Mom’s case it was too late, my grandmother Emma had passed away and taken the secret of how to schnippel beans with her.

As far as I can tell Grandma Emma spent her life growing and preparing food. I use the same garden that she did and I imagine I could be walking in her footsteps as I pick green beans. Her kitchen was in the basement of the farm house in which I live now. She cooked on a wood fired stove and served meals on a big walnut table. I still use some of her kitchen tools; her flour sifter is one of my favorites. She used a dark alcove in the basement to store her canned goods. When I was a girl I remember my Mom pointing out a dusty quart jar on one of the shelves in that alcove. It was packed full of French cut green beans and it had a paper label dated 1952, the year before Grandma Emma died. My mom marveled at how thin and uniformly the beans were cut and how well preserved they were considering the jar was at least fifteen years old.

“I’m afraid to open the jar to throw out the beans. I don’t know what sort of ‘bugs’ are growing in there after all these years.” Mom said turning off the light in the basement.

Almost forty years after Grandma Emma canned that jar of beans I found myself back in the same basement cleaning up in preparation for new furnace ducts. I was standing on a step stool when I noticed that something was stuck between an old duct and the first floor joists above my head. I reached up and pulled down an odd sort of wooden box. It was a narrow rectangular shape with a handle attached to a wheel on one side and two narrow tin tubes set into the opposite side.

It had four “feet” on the bottom that extended like sled runners. I took it outside to brush away the dirt and cobwebs and noticed that there were three razor blade-like insertions in the wheel that was attached to the handle.

My only thought was that I had found some sort of antique food processor. I took the gadget to the kitchen and set it on the counter then continued with the basement clean up. But I couldn’t stop trying to figure out for what purpose that contraption was once used.

It was about three hours later when I was steaming green beans for dinner that it hit me. It was Grandma Emma’s green bean slicer! The two tubes would have consistently fed green beans into the blades—now hopelessly rusty—at the perfect angle to turn out the slices I saw in that jar when I was a girl. I had solved the mystery of how Grandma Emma schnippeled all those beans. But even if I could have figured out a way to sharpen the blades it was too late to prepare a dish of schnippeled beans for my Dad because he had passed away a few years earlier.


This is my favorite green bean salad recipe. I think my Dad would have liked it in spite of the fact that the beans aren’t schnippeled.

Four Bean Salad

1 pound fresh green beans, tipped, tailed, and blanched

1 small white or red onion, chopped

¾ cup Edamame, (green soybeans) thawed if using frozen

¾ cup canned black beans, rinsed

¾ cup canned Garbanzo beans, rinsed

¼ cup olive oil

¼ cup balsamic vinegar

½ teaspoon salt

Fresh ground pepper to taste


Put all the beans and the onion in a large bowl. In a small bowl whisk the salt and pepper into the vinegar then whisk in the olive oil. Pour the oil and vinegar over the beans and toss to combine. Serve now or store in the refrigerator up to two days.

Caprese

This is a Cabernet grape tomato. It is about the size of a large grape and tastes almost as sweet. I set these magic little jewels in a bowl on the kitchen counter and they disappear.

This is my version of the classic Italian Caprese Salad. As with the classic salad, all the ingredients must be at their peak of flavor and freshness.

2 cups home grown grape tomatoes, sliced in half

One 8 oz container of fresh mozzarella ciliegine (cherry sized balls)

6 to 8 large, fresh basil leaves, chopped

3 Tablespoons olive oil

1 Tablespoon balsamic vinegar

Sea salt and freshly ground pepper to taste

Toss all ingredients together and serve.