Upside-Down Pear

This evening, we picked up our farm box and headed home with it. In my head, I tried to count up what we had left from last week, what we’d need to make room for in the refrigerator, what meals I could make with this new bounty. August is always difficult for me; there’s too much food in the farm box to get around!

Since we had a new head of red cabbage, I decided to turn the older one in the fridge into the first braised red cabbage of the season. I chopped it and tossed it into the Dutch oven with some olive oil, salt, a lot of black pepper, caraway seeds, about a half-cup of dried currants, about a half-cup of water, and a solid glug of some fig-infused balsamic vinegar from my mother-in-law.

I let it simmer a bit, but I felt like it was lacking something. I toyed with adding onions, or sugar, or cider vinegar, or bacon, or chicken broth, or….

Finally, paralyzed by indecision, I resorted to the web; one of the first hits I got included all of the ingredients I’d been toying with. Hah!

Ingredients excerpted from “Braised Red Cabbage with Bacon”

• 1 medium head red cabbage
• 6 thick slices applewood-smoked bacon, or other smoked bacon, cut into lardons (about 1/4-by-1/4-by-3/4-inch pieces)
• 1 medium yellow onion, thinly sliced
• 2 tablespoons packed dark brown sugar
• 2 tablespoons Dijon mustard
• 1/3 cup apple cider vinegar
• 1 cup low-sodium chicken broth

I had some black forest bacon and a vidalia onion. In a separate pan (since the Dutch oven was already in use!) I fried the bacon, then tossed the pieces into the cabbage; while the onions fried in the bacon fat, I added some cider vinegar, brown sugar, and dijon mustard to the cabbage. When the onions were ready, in they went…and so did a nice dash of cayenne pepper. I left out the chicken broth, because I’d already added salt and water earlier.

It came out sweet and spicy and rich, with just a hint of autumn in the apple-and-mustard undertones.

Nat asked me particularly to write this one down before I forgot it, and I rather think that’s an endorsement. Next time, though, I’ll probably use the more traditional method in the recipe, rather than the after-the-fact adjustment method!

It’s hot out, and I don’t have central air.

I also hurt my leg at rugby practice.

So I’m not real big on standing over the stove right now.

Fortunately, it’s also mid-August, which means that my kitchen contained everything for one of my favorite summer dishes: green beans with garlic and tomatoes.

The garlic is sweated in extra-virgin olive oil, so I don’t have to stand over the pan like I do when sauteeing; the dish is easy to ignore while you do other things, and it’s tasty hot or cold. The tomatoes add a summery, fresh kick to what is otherwise an everyday kind of dish.

Summer Garlic Green Beans

• 1 lb green beans, ends snapped off, cut into 1″ lengths (or left whole, or haricots verts…)
• 2 cloves garlic, minced
• 1 medium tomato, diced
• extra virgin olive oil
• salt
• black pepper

Heat about a tablespoon of the olive oil on low heat. Add a little salt and the minced garlic, spread it around, and let sweat for about 5 minutes. Add green beans and tomatoes, and increase the heat to medium. Every few minutes, give it a good stir around. When the beans are bright green, add the black pepper, adjust the salt to taste, and give it another good stir. Turn off the heat.

You can let it sit there and continue to cook itself in its own warmth, or serve it immediately, or let it cool down and eat it cold with perhaps a dash of red wine vinegar. Personally, I like to time it so that it has been sitting about 5 minutes when dinner is ready for the table.

I’ve long been a fan of eggs with red sauce. When I was a child, I would toast an Italian roll with provolone cheese on it, fry up an egg, and make an egg-cheese-and-sauce sandwich for breakfast or weekend lunch. My sauce of choice in those days was the Newman’s Own “Sockarooni” that my mother stocked, and which I will also admit to eating straight with a spoon.

As an adult, I make my own red sauce, in the old-school simmering-for-hours way, and I’ll often fry eggs and dress them with some sauce for breakfast or brunch. Last week, I made a large batch of sauce with sausage in, and up until today I had two quart containers full in my refrigerator.

This morning, I was cranky and in no mood for any of my normal breakfast options. It was closing in on 11:30am, and nothing I thought of made me happy. I yanked two cookbooks from the shelf and flipped through them, and in Craig Claiborne’s The New New York Time Cookbook I found a recipe entitled “Les Oeufs en Cocotte aux Tomates (Eggs in ramekins with tomato sauce)”.

The tomato sauce in the recipe is not an Italian-style red sauce, but it didn’t matter. I wasn’t going to use it in any case: I was going to steal the idea and the cooking method and use the sauce in my fridge.

• about 8-10 tbsp red sauce with sausage chunks (or your favorite red sauce)
• 4 eggs
• salt & pepper
• 4 slices toast

I placed 4 ramekins into a large Pyrex baking dish. Into the bottoms of the ramekins, I put a heaping spoonful of sauce, making sure there was a chunk of sausage in each, and reserving some sauce for topping later. Over each pile of sauce, I cracked an egg, and sprinkled with salt and pepper. I poured boiling water into the Pyrex dish until it came halfway up the side of the ramekins, and then popped the whole thing into a 400 degree oven until the eggs were just set. The original recipe said 10-12 minutes, but that was using hot tomato sauce; my sauce was just out of the fridge and slowed things down considerably — it took about 20 minutes.

I pulled it out of the oven, top-dressed the eggs with a little more sauce (reheated, of course) and served with toast fingers and cafe con leche.

Bliss!