We were thankfully safe, and relatively dry, after Irene raged through town, but some of our neighbors were not so lucky. It was hard not to feel just a little embittered at the folks down in New York shouting Overrreaction! while whole towns and historic covered bridges rattled down swollen rivers in Vermont.

But, like I say, we were safe and dry, and only lost power for a few minutes. Which meant that my emergency plan of grilling and canning the rapidly melting food in the freezer thankfully never came to fruition. Instead, one rainy evening, I made a meal that looks toward autumn, while still taking full advantage of the plentiful; produce of summer — roast local chicken (Square Roots Farm), small salted red potatoes, chard sauté with dill, parley, and green onions, and smashed purple haze carrots with cumin and caraway. The last one is the recipe I want to share with you today.

No, it doesn’t look pretty. But it tastes good!

Are you a soaker, or no? With your beans, I mean. I see so much contradictory information about soaking — not to mention adding baking soda to the cooking water — that I sometimes feel a little overwhelmed at the idea of cooking up a humble batch of beans. Such simple food should not require such anxiety.*

Maybe it’s just me. Maybe it’s just the anxiety that’s spilled over into my life, creeping in from elsewhere, from a place where it should have probably stayed. It’s just that I started doing my taxes the other day (emphatically not fun when you’re a freelancer), and then my car wouldn’t start one night (ka-chug-chug-chug-chug it flailed), and today I woke up inexplicably jittery, feeling as though my head were orbiting somewhere in the next ZIP code.

Good thing I have soup for lunch. Soup is warm, simple, and probably my favorite food. This soup is suffused with garlic and bolstered by rich beans and bean cooking liquor. I used chickpeas, because that’s what I had on hand, but white beans would be excellent, too, and in fact that’s how the recipe was originally written. Use whatever you have around. Drizzle a little fancy olive oil over the top, shave on some Pecorino Romano, and serve it up with a little dish of olives and some crusty bread.

Maybe a glass of wine, too? Go on, let the anxiety melt.

(For the record, I soak — almost always overnight, with a change of water if I think of it — and pre-cook with a pinch of baking soda.)

This tart is a winter mainstay, and a great way to use those heavy-duty carrots you’ve got rolling around in the root cellar (or vegetable drawer, as the case may be). It’s somehow at once filling and light and the combination of the cooked onions, rice vinegar, and tarragon lend a really unusual, savory flavor you don’t often find in a vegetarian dish. Last year, I served this as the main veggie course at Thanksgiving and it was a big hit.

Quinoa and I have been having a little love affair recently. Don’t worry — Dan knows. And anyway, it’s okay, because quinoa and I go way back.

In college I worked in a small, patchouli-scented health food store (as they were called then, before Whole Foods smashed them all into smithereens) in the snooty little Westchester town I’d unfortunately found myself in for four miserable years. One afternoon I was manning the register, probably with a profoundly sour expression on my face. A young woman dressed entirely in freshly-pressed Talbots attire strolled in and deigned to ask me a question.

“Do you have any keen-wah?” she said, blue eyes blinking.

In response, I’m pretty sure I heaved an enormous, leaden sigh. What the hell was this prissy asshole looking for? Keen-wah? What the *@#/^ is that?

“It’s a grain,” said the woman, as if she’d read my mind. Thanks, lady. So helpful.

I pried myself from behind the cash register and shuffled to the aisle where the dry goods were kept. Keen-wah. I scanned the boxes and bags on the shelves. Keen-wah. I didn’t see anything remotely like this weirdly-named grain.

“Sorry,” I said. “We don’t have it.”

With that, the woman left the store and I could get back to the very serious business of brooding, scowling, and occasionally misting the produce with a spray bottle.

It wasn’t until later that day, during closing, that I mentioned the incident to my boss. I asked him if we sold something called keen-wah, and he said, yes, of course. As if to counter the dubious expression on my face, he strode over to the dry goods aisle and gestured grandly at a small box on a high shelf.

Whole Grain Organic Quinoa it said.

Right. Of course. Didn’t see it there. Red-faced, I sheepishly bought a bag of the damn grain, clocked out for the evening, and rode my bike sullenly home. Stupid, stupid. Keen-wah is quinoa, not kwin-oh-ah.

And so my love affair with quinoa began. It’s an affair worth taking up, too — quinoa is packed with protein and other nutrients, has a nutty, almost sweet flavor, and is a light, fluffy alternative to rice. Quinoa is not a grain, despite my little story’s assertion, but is actually a relative of Swiss chard.

Quinoa’s light fluffiness to me means it’s a great summertime “grain,” and it cooks up quickly, which means less heat in the kitchen.

But since summer here has been nonexistent — temperatures have hovered below 70 for what seems like eons — heating up the kitchen was not a concern last night when I prepared a meal of quinoa-stuffed pattypan squash. If you can’t find pattypan, another yellow summer squash, or even a regular old zucchini, will do, but the pattypan is just so cute, and so bowl-like, it’s almost begging to be cut open and stuffed.

Quinoa-Stuffed Pattypan Squash with Summer Herbs

1/2 c. quinoa, rinsed well
pinch saffron threads
4 small pattypan squash (they should fit in your hand)
3 scallions, thinly sliced
1/8 c. shredded mozzarella
3 tbs. freshly grated Parmesan
3 tbs. chopped basil leaves, chopped
1 tsp. fresh thyme leaves, chopped
1 tsp. fresh oregano leaves, chopped
1 tsp. fresh parsley leaves, chopped
1 tsp. lemon zest
salt and pepper

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees.

Add the quinoa and 1 c. water to a small saucepan and set it over medium-high heat. Once the quinoa reaches a boil add the saffron, then reduce it to a simmer and cook, covered, for about 30 minutes. (Or follow package directions.)

Meanwhile, halve the squash lengthwise and scoop out the flesh with a spoon, leaving two small squash bowls. If the empty squash bowl bottoms topple over, slice a bit off the bottom to level them. Finely chop the flesh and reserve. Once the quinoa is cooked, combine it with the chopped squash and the rest of the ingredients, and season liberally with salt and freshly ground pepper. Stuff the squash bottoms with the quinoa mixture, replace the tops, then place them in a baking dish. Add just a bit of water to the bottom baking dish, cover with foil, and bake for about 25 minutes, or until the squash is tender.

Serve with a fresh, garlicky tomato sauce, drizzled with balsamic vinegar, or alongside pesto-smeared baguette rounds.

Serves 4

While we’re on the topic of greens overload, I thought I’d share with you another great recipe for that big, leafy vegetable that seems to be a CSA staple here in the northeast: escarole.

At our CSA pickup every week I see people eyeing suspiciously the bin right next to the romaine. In it, a giant, lettuce-like vegetable flashes its frilly, pale green leaves. Good old escarole. In the weekly email newsletter, our farmers suggested braising the escarole. It’s a fairly bitter and hearty vegetable, and can stand up to a braise. But even I sometimes balk at a soupy pile of greens on my plate, which is why I’d like to propose something else entirely. Calzones.

These calzones, adapted from a recipe in the inimitable Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone, are like enormous, portable pizza pockets. Really, they are huge. They’re an entire meal — a meal you can eat with your hands. Who doesn’t like eating with their hands?

Giant Escarole Calzones

Adapted from Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone by Deborah Madison

Yes, the recipe is a little time-consuming — after all, you’re making the dough from scratch — but a lot of it is downtime, and it’s easy. This is a great rainy weekend project, and would probably be fun for kids to help out with. Be sure to liberally flour the baking sheet that the prepared calzones will rest on or you’ll have trouble sliding them into the oven.

For the Dough

1 1/2 c. warm water
1 packet active dry yeast
2 tbs. extra virgin olive oil
1 1/2 tsp. salt
1 c. whole wheat flour
3 to 3 1/2 c. all-purpose flour

Pur 1/2 c. of the water into a mixing bowl, stir in the yeast, and let stand 10 minutes or until foamy. Add the rest of the water, the oil, and salt. Mix in the whole wheat flour and the white flour, a bit at a time, until a moist and shaggy dough begins to form. Turn it out onto a floured surface and knead until smooth, adding more flour as needed to keep the dough from sticking. (Better yet, mix everything in a stand mixer, first with the paddle, then switch to the dough hook once the dough comes together. With the dough hook, mix for another 10 minutes on medium speed, or until the dough is smooth and a little tacky.)

Let the dough rise for about an hour, or until doubled in size. While the dough is rising, make the calzone filling.

For the Calzone

2 tbs. olive oil
4 garlic cloves, chopped
1/2 tsp. red pepper flakes (or more, to taste)
2 bunches escarole, washed and roughly chopped
1/2 c. pitted Kalamata olives
2 tbs. capers, rinsed
3/4 c. grated mozzarella
3/4 c. grated Fontina
2 tbs. grated Parmesan
2 tsp. balsamic vinegar
salt and pepper

Preheat the oven to 450 degrees. If you have a pizza stone, heat that up in there, too.

Heat the oil in a very large skillet over medium-high heat, and add the garlic and red pepper flakes. When the garlic is fragrant, add the chopped escarole and sauté, turning it with tongs, until it is tender, about 5 minutes. (If you have a large wok, you may be able to get away with one batch, otherwise divide the escarole and repeat.) Remove the escarole to a colander and press out as much liquid as you can. (In the oven, liquid will burst out of the calzones, making the dough gooey and your oven messy. No good.) Combine with the remaining ingredients and season well with salt and pepper.

Divide the dough into six pieces, setting aside two to use for another purpose. Roll the four into thin 6 1/2-inch circles and set them on a floured pizza peel or the back of a sheet pan. Let them rest for 15 minutes. Place the filling over half of each circle, leaving a 1-inch border around the edge. Brush the edge with water, then fold the top of the dough over the filling, pinching the edges closed. Slide the calzones onto the pizza stone and bake until browned on top, 15 to 20 minutes.

Yield: 4 giant calzones.

“This is the best bok choy I’ve ever grown,” said Don, head honcho at Caretaker Farm and provider of 95% of the vegetables that land on my plate from June through November. I was giddily stuffing fistfuls of spinach into my canvas bag, but paused to regard the small, pale green bunches of bok choy that Don was now encouraging into two unsuspecting new CSA members’ bags. The two women glanced at each other with vaguely worried looks as Don happily headed off to tend to another farm task.

“But what do we do with it?” one woman asked the other, sotto voce, as several small children eddied around them, tugging on pant legs and waving stalks of rhubarb. The other woman offered a small shrug of unfamiliarity, and the two of them, and their brood, shuffled in the direction of the baby salad greens.

Meanwhile, I’d sidled up to the bok choy. Don’s glowing review notwithstanding, bok choy (also called pak choi, or Chinese cabbage) is one of my favorite vegetables, especially when it’s young and tender, as these sweet little bundles were. Bok choy is great, because it’s like two vegetables in one: the crisp, pale green stalks, and the supple, spinach-like leaves. You find it most often in a Chinese style stir-fry, where its two-for-the-price-of-one allure really stands out — the stems cook up tender and translucent while retaining their crunch, and the leaves wilt to a soft, dark green.

I hoped that those two as-yet unenlightened women would take some bok choy home with them that afternoon. They’d never know what they were missing.

Stir-Fried Bok Choy and Mung Beans with Sesame Noodles

Bok choy’s mildly cabbagey flavor gets along well with stir-fry flavors like garlic, ginger, and red chile. Here, I’ve paired it with cold sesame noodles — one of my favorite, summery, not-quite-junk-food recipes. Don’t let the two ingredient lists deter you — this easy meal comes together in under 10 minutes. You can usually find mung bean sprouts in the produce section, or you can sprout your own at home, like we did. This dish would also be great with small cubes of firm tofu, if you have some on hand.

For the sesame noodles:

1 inch knob peeled fresh ginger
1 medium garlic clove
1/2 c peanut butter
1/4 c shoyu, tamari, or soy sauce
1/3 c warm water
2 tbs rice vinegar
1 1/2 tablespoons toasted sesame oil
1 tbs honey
1 tsp chili sauce
1 lb dried udon noodles, or dried buckwheat soba nooodles
small fistful scallions, chives, or garlic chives, thinly sliced
4 tbs toasted sesame seeds

For the bok choy:

2 tbs canola oil
1 tsp sesame oil
4 garlic cloves, minced
4 tsp minced ginger
1 1/2 pounds bok choy, leaves trimmed and reserved, stems cut to 1-inch pieces
2 tbs shoyu, tamari, or soy sauce
1 tsp sambal oelek, or your favorite hot chile sauce, or a pinch red chile flakes
1 c mung bean sprouts
3 tbs roasted, unsalted peanuts

Place the ginger and garlic in the bowl of a food processor and pulse several times until minced. Add the next seven ingredients and blend until smooth, about two minutes.

Bring a large pot of water to a boil over high heat. Add the noodles and cook according to package directions. When the noodles are ready, drain and rinse in cold water. In a large bowl, toss the noodles with the sesame-peanut sauce, scallions, and sesame seeds.

Meanwhile, set a wok or large skillet over high heat. Add 2 tbs oil and tilt the wok to coat with the oil. When the oil is hot, add the garlic and ginger and stir-fry for just a minute. Add the bok choy stems and leaves and stir-fry for another minute or two, until the leaves have darkened and wilted. Add the shoyu and hot sauce, stirring to distribute. Remove the pan from heat and add the bean sprouts and peanuts, stirring again to incorporate.

Use tongs to distribute the sesame noodles to individual dishes. Top each serving with a generous heap of bok choy and a sprinkling of peanuts. Serve with extra hot sauce on the side.

Serves 4

One Local Summer hasn’t officially started up yet, but here in Berkshire county, we’re eating local several days a a week thanks to the amazing, beautiful bounty of the Caretaker Farm CSA. Tonight we had a positively sublime summer salad due, in part, to a bit of a cheesemaking fluke. From failure comes total deliciousness — tonight at least.

As you might remember, Dan and I have failed before at cheesemaking. And I thought we were mostly over it, until we stopped by Neighborly Farms in Vermont last weekend, and met the baby cows and sheep, and came home with a quart of goat’s milk, convinced we were going to make some chèvre.

Needless to say, we failed once again. What we ended up with was more like goat’s milk yogurt. It was a little too runny to really be called cheese, but if I wasn’t prepared to throw it out, nor was I prepared to hunker down with a spoon and granola at breakfast time. What could I possibly do with this weird concoction? I thought back to the spectacular (one year anniversary!) dinner we had last weekend, at Hen of the Wood restaurant in Waterbury, Vermont. Dan had a really lovely salad dressed with buttermilk dressing, and my salad featured spring peas, radishes, and crème fraîche (and feta, delicious local feta). The two ideas cross-pollinated, and I had a solution for dinner tonight.

Following the skeleton of a recipe for a standard buttermilk dressing, I whipped up a salad dressing with the un-chèvre:

1/3 cup goat’s milk yogurt (or buttermilk, if you’re normal)
2 tbs. olive oil
1 tbs. mayonnaise
2 tbs. apple cider vinegar
1 scallion, thinly sliced

And, with that, dressed a light salad of young leaf lettuces, sliced red radishes, and snap peas.

The tangy goat’s milk was the perfect accompaniment to the sweet lettuces and peas, and the radishes had just the right bite to cut through the subtle creaminess.

Atop my salad I perched a homemade portobello mushroom and quinoa veggie burger, and Dan had a local, pasture-raised burger with Shropshire blue cheese and grilled onions.

We complemented the meal with Ommegang’s bizarrely-named Ommegeddon — but any farmhouse ale would do. (My vote goes to Southampton Saison.)

On Saturday morning I went out for my usual early-morning walk with Bix, down by the riverside. It was just after eight, but instead of feeling bleary-eyed, I was alert, almost tingling. I watched the river rush past the sandy shore and saw, right in front of me, the unfurling fronds of ferns. Just weeks ago they would have been fiddleheads — and edible. Excited, I jogged down the path a little further, to a quieter, cooler, out-of-the-way spot. Sure enough, there they were. Fiddleheads. Right there on the site of so many morning walks.

I came back on Sunday morning convinced that where fiddleheads grew, ramps would too. I studied pictures of ramps online, and scoured foraging message boards. I hadn’t had a fresh ramp in three years, and needed some brushing up. Dan and I headed out Sunday morning armed with optimism and a New York City Greenmarket tote bag.

We combed through the forest, carefully. So much green! So many ferns! Bix swam in the river and chased the ball when we threw it, when we were able to tear our eyes away from the soil. Dan wandered off the path into a small grove and I lingered near the base of a old oak tree at the edge of a marshy wetland. And then I saw those broad, pink-stemmed leaves. I called Dan over. He’d dug wild leeks in the woods behind his childhood home in upstate New York. That was it; I’d found it — a tiny stand of ramps in the woods.

Dan dug into the soil with his fingers and pulled a few ramps. We loaded up our Greenmarket bag, thinking about the last time we’d held ramps in our city-white hands: on the asphalt, on 17th St., next to a big, white tent. We dug them up ourselves and left plenty to germinate for next year.

And tonight, we made risotto.

Spring Ramp Risotto
Dan and I first made this dish from a recipe in New York magazine, in April of 2005. We served it with spring asparagus baked en papillote with saffron and shallots. It would be just as great, we decided, with a rare lamb chop. This recipe departs from the original in its hearty use of ramps — while the New York recipe calls for four, I used at least ten. If you got ‘em, flaunt ‘em, and, if you can, accompany them with a juicy red wine and an herby salad with toasted walnuts — bad breath be damned!

2 tbs. olive oil
1 tbs. butter
1 medium onion, finely chopped
10 ramps
pinch red pepper flakes
1 1/2 c. arborio rice
1/2 c. white wine
4 c. vegetable or chicken stock
parmesan cheese, grated
salt and pepper to taste

In a wide saucepan, heat the butter and olive oil over medium-low heat. Add the chopped onion and sautee for 8 – 10 minutes (be patient!) or until golden brown and smelling quite good. Meanwhile, put the stock into a small pot and bring it to a simmer.

While the onion is cooking, chop the ramp bulbs, thick stems, and about three-quarters of the greens. Chiffonade the remaining greens. Add the chopped ramps and half of the ramp greens, along with the red pepper flakes, to the onion and stir. Reserve the chiffonade.

Add rice to the pan and stir to coat, cooking for a minute or two. Add the white wine and stir constantly until the wine has mostly evaporated.

Add the simmering stock, 1/4 to 1/2 of a cup at a time, stirring constantly. Wait until the stock is absorbed before adding more. As you near the end of the stock reserve, reduce the heat to low. Cook for about 20 minutes, or until the rice is plump but al dente, and the risotto has a creamy, porridge-like consistency. Add the remaining chopped ramp greens (they’ll wilt and provide a shot of bright green flavor). Season with salt and fresh-cracked pepper to taste — at least a teaspoon or two of salt.

Stir in a good handful of grated parmesan, and serve, topped with more parmesan, a drizzling of olive oil, and the chiffonade of fresh ramp leaves.

Serves four.

A sure sign of spring in New York City is the arrival of fiddlehead ferns and ramps in the Union Square Greenmarket. Through the wet, gray winter I’d pined for those first green leaves’ arrival, and nearly leaped for joy when I finally spotted them some late April morning on the way to my old corporate job.

Alas, I’m not in New York City anymore, but out in the Berkshires, where spindly trees are exploding with green buds all around me, and where you’d think finding something like fiddlehead ferns and ramps would be as easy as sauntering into the nearest forest and plucking them right up out of the ground.

And it just may be that easy — if I knew where they grew. But if there’s one thing I learned from living out here, it’s that that kind of local knowledge takes time. Unlike the city, out here there are no faded flyers posted to neighborhood telephone poles announcing a meeting of the forager’s society. There’s no word on the street that ramps have started poking up in wherever-it-is-that-ramps-grow. (If there is word on the street about such things, I’m not privy to it.)

So I was delighted when I spotted some local fiddleheads in a basket at the co-op, and greedily gathered fistfuls of them while pestering the produce manager about a source for local ramps. The fiddleheads languished in the refrigerator for a day while I schemed about what to do with them, but ultimately it seems that simple is best when it comes to fresh spring greens, so I tossed them together with some of my garden herbs and pasta. (I’m still working on the ramps.)

Herby Fiddlehead Ferns & Orechiette

1 tbs. olive oil
1 tbs. butter
1 shallot, minced
1 tbs. each tarragon and thyme, chopped (I used half lemon thyme, half regular thyme; you can use whatever fresh herbs you have on hand, really)
1/4 c. parsley, chopped
2 c. fiddlehead ferns
1/2 lb. orechiette pasta
shaved parmesan cheese (the best you can get)
1 tsp. lemon juice (the juice from about a half-moon quarter slice)
salt and pepper to taste

Set a large pot of salted water to boil. In the meantime, rinse the fiddleheads, making sure to remove any brown bits. Trim the brown edge from their tails. When the water comes to a boil, toss the fiddleheads in and boil for 2 -3 minutes, until bright green. Using a slotted spoon, scoop out the fiddlheads, drain, and set aside. Add the pasta to the water and cook until just al dente, or according to package directions.

While the pasta is cooking, place the butter and olive oil in a large sautee pan over medium-low heat. When the butter is melted and beginning to foam, add the shallots and cook for a few minutes, or until the shallots begin releasing a really great aroma. Throw in the herbs and cook for a few minutes more, stirring occasionally to be sure nothing sticks or burns. Just before the pasta is ready, add the parboiled ferns to the sautee pan and stir. Drain the pasta and add to the sautee pan, stirring to coat everything. Toss with lemon juice, and salt and pepper to taste.

Ladle each serving into a large bowl and top with freshly shaved parmesan cheese and cracked pepper.

Makes 4 small servings, or two big ones, depending on how hungry you are.

Carrie at Sommer Designs has started a little dinner challenge Flickr group. I’ve decided to participate, since just about the only thing creative I can do these days is whip up something tasty in the kitchen. It’s cold outside, and cooking keeps me warm.

Unfortunately, I’m not the best at sticking with recipes, which is why I rarely post them. The soup pictured above started out from a recipe in Deborah Madison’s Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone (I might have mentioned this tome before — it’s my kitchen bible), but quickly mutated into something else altogether. I tend to take recipes as a rough guide — inspiration, almost — and then do whatever I can to alter them to my taste. It’s easy to improvise, especially with soups, and with a few years of vegetarian café soup duty behind me, I have a few tricks in my soup arsenal. In any case, here’s what I remember of the recipe, as I made it.

Vegetable and White Bean Soup with Kale and Freekeh

• 1 medium onion, finely diced
• 1 tablespoon rosemary, chopped
• 1 tablespoon cumin, ground
• 2 carrots, diced
• 6 garlic cloves, sliced
• 1 cup parsley, chopped
• olive oil
• 1 cup tomatoes, fresh or canned, diced, with their juices
• 2 cups black-eyed peas, dry, rinsed
• 1 cup navy or other white beans, dry, rinsed
• 1 cup freekeh (green wheat; I got mine at a Lebanese market), or a hearty rice, rinsed
• nutritional yeast (great for flavor in veggie-based soups)
• 1/2 head lacinato kale, washed, trimmed, and chopped
• red pepper flakes
• salt and pepper
• grating cheese, such as romano or parmesan

Heat a tablespoon of olive oil in a large soup pot over medium heat. Add the onion, carrot, rosemary, and cumin and cook until the onion is softened, about 10 minutes. Add the parsley and 5 of the sliced cloves of garlic and cook a few minutes more. Add the beans and tomato and 3 quarts water, bring to a boil. Lower heat and simmer until the beans begin to soften, about an hour. Add the freekeh or rice, 2 – 3 teaspoons salt, and a good handful of nutritional yeast and continue cooking until beans are soft and freekeh/rice is cooked through, about 30 minutes.

In the meantime, heat a tablespoon of olive oil in a large sautee pan. Cook the remaining garlic and a pinch of red pepper flakes until fragrant. Add the kale and cook until soft, about 5 minutes. Stir the cooked kale into the soup. Ladle into bowls and top with shaved romano and extra pepper.