August 1999

ABUNDANCE

It is full, late summer, the time of year when gardens are overgrown, plants and vines huge, and everything ripens right now. There are forty pounds of zucchini, or 3 bushels of corn, all at the same moment.

I only plant tomatoes now, and as far as I'm concerned you can't have too many of them. A hundred pounds of tomatoes in one week simply means it's time to make sauce for the winter. You can find the recipe for it, with all the instructions, on page 46 of The New Vegetarian Epicure: "For a hundred pounds of tomatoes, you will want four or five heads of garlic, several big bunches of fresh basil, some salt, and only abut a quart of good olive oil..." Etc.

Years ago, though, before I was surrounded by excellent farmers' markets, I grew a bigger vegetable garden. Besides tomatoes and basil I had sweet peas and corn, lettuces, squash, peppers and eggplants. It was wonderful to go out there toward the end of the day, when the sun was low and the air just beginning to cool. I'd get good and dirty, rarely using my gloves. I love the smell of dirt, and standing with a hose, watering freshly turned earth in the late day warmth, is a pleasure of the season, like ice cream cones and walks at dusk.

The vegetables were great. Freshness is the reward of the gardener, and so is the abundance, sometimes comical and unexpected. I remember the first time I planted corn. My boys were small then. One day they ran in, flushed with excitement, to tell me that the corn was ready so they had picked it. They had picked every single ear in the garden.

We ate corn on the cob (so sweet!), and I made corn soup and corn relish - I don't even remember what else. For several days, corn was on the menu at every meal, and then it was gone.

Sometimes that abundance can be a curse, as all gardeners know. Nothing can make you feel as guilty as a pile of ripe, uneaten produce, slowly decaying in your refrigerator or in the garden. It's worse than your stack of unread New Yorkers.

On the other hand, abundance can be the necessity that leads to invention. When I found a zucchini striving to attain the size of a baseball bat, I figured out a very simple soup made with lots of zucchini and onions, and a fair amount of basil. I pureed it, served it up with a drizzle of cream and some crumbled feta cheese on top, and it became a family favorite. I've been making it for years, sometimes even buying the zucchini for it.

When you've given away all the zucchini your neighbors will take, try this soup (See "New Recipes" for Zucchini and Basil Soup). I think it's a better solution than zucchini bread, which is heavy with oil and doesn't use that much zucchini anyway.

This summer I happened to have a huge quantity of enormous, gorgeous beets - both the red and the golden ones. They came from the garden of a young man who lives at the bottom of the hill from me, and sells bushels of fresh produce on a weekly basis to those neighbors who subscribe. He's incredibly responsive to suggestions and hints - "Think of me as your personal farmer," he said once - and when I mentioned that I really liked beets and could use a few extra, I was promptly given an extra bushel, filled to the brim.

Now - what do you do with a bushel of beets, all at once? I went back to a salad I'd been making for picnics earlier in the summer: the beets are roasted in their skins, together with whole cloves of garlic, then cooled and cut up, while the soft garlic becomes part of the vinaigrette. I add shredded basil, which marries beautifully with beets, providing a bright, peppery contrast, and the salad is finished with a handful of chopped sugared walnuts, for a crunchy texture and another layer of sweetness. (See "New Recipes" for Roasted Beet Salad.)

It's a great salad to make ahead, because it won't wilt. I eat it alone, or add it to mixed greens. A recent, tasty combination was baby arugula and baby spinach, dressed with olive oil and a drop of balsamic vinegar, topped with a generous mound of the roasted beets, and sprinkled with a few sugared walnuts at the last minute. It was sweet and peppery, fresh and rich and tart all at once. To make a satisfying, light meal of this, add a few slices of hard-cooked egg, always a good companion for beets, and some fresh bread.

The marvelous side of abundance, of course, is the feeling of luxury that comes with having a whole lot of something that you crave the rest of the year, something that you ration when it makes its first exclusive and expensive showing in the market.

I think of white peaches that way, as a rare and precious commodity. Their season is so brief, and even in their season they are scarce, because their fragile nature makes packing and transporting them difficult. All this delicate handling also keeps them expensive. They're a dinner party splurge, like truffles - sliced white peaches in iced wine for dessert, or a white peach mousse, served in small quantities with dark chocolate wafers.

But last week my friend Nancy gave me a basket of white peaches from her tree. "I have so many!" she said. She told me that she had made five peach pies one day and passed them out to the neighbors. I can imagine the goodwill and bonhomie inspired by that moment of abundance. I took the peaches gratefully. Their perfume filled the car on the way home, and I felt swept away by summer. For several days, we sliced white peaches and piled them on our breakfast cereal, or threw them into the blender with ice and lemon and yogurt for sensational smoothies.

Nancy said she had made a wonderful sorbet. Perfect, I thought - a chilly essence of white peaches - and I could experiment with the formula, because I wasn't rationed. I pureed peaches, added a few gratings of lemon zest and some juice, and then a drop of almond extract. It was heavenly. (See "New Recipes" for White Peach Sorbet)

For an exceptional and refreshing summer meal, why not put these three together? Start with a bowl of zucchini soup and a crusty roll. Then have the roasted beet salad on a bed of fresh greens, with wedges of hard-boiled eggs, and finish with a dish of white peach sorbet. You will enjoy a range of flavors straight from the garden and the orchard, and feel abundance without overload.

August 1999 recipe