Tasty April

We are lucky enough to have a free place to stay in Ocean City, Md., and for the last several years that’s been our summer vacation spot. It’s a two-bedroom condo right on the beach (which is a dream with a toddler) and it has a full kitchen. Packing a few lunches and making a couple of simple dinner saves a few pennies to be able to get more than a pizza when we do head out for a meal.

My struggles with cooking at the beach are few, because I do love to cook and the kitchen is open so I can look out onto the ocean or see what my family is doing in the living room. However, the oven is electric. I hate cooking with an electric stove! I need the control of the open flame of a gas range. Also, the knives are very dull and if I am going to do some elaborate recipe, I need to be able to chop something.

So I opt for simple meals. This year’s dinners were broiled steak with local new potatoes and green beans, curry night, and chili with corn bread.

Here’s a couple of shortcuts I took:

Curry night naan. I couldn’t find naan in the grocery store freezer or bakery. So I improvised. I grabbed a Pillsbury Pizza Crust Thin. When I got it home I unrolled it, cut it in four triangular pieces and topped with minced garlic. I followed the directions and baked the bread at 400 degrees and kept an eye on it. When it started to brown, I pulled it out and glazed it with butter. Naan-erific! Well, close enough.

Chili spices. As you can imagine, there’s a lot of hardware that goes into taking a toddler to the beach for a week. Throw in dad’s Boogie board, two laptops and clothes and I can’t bear to add one more thing to the pile. But when I want to make chili, how do I season it? Looking back I could have packed a single portion of all of the spices in a sandwich bag, but it probably would have ended up a mess. I remembered seeing something in the grocery store that would help, so I went searching in the spice aisle. I found McCormick’s Recipe Inspirations and while there wasn’t one specifically for chili, the quesadilla casserole package did the trick. It had chili powder, oregano, minced garlic, cumin and crushed red pepper. I stashed the garlic because I did have some fresh to use, but the rest went into the pot with onion, ground beef, beans, tomatoes and tomato paste. I found some Worcestershire sauce in the fridge and threw some of that in. Yummy chili!

The moral of the story is, you don’t have to have a tandoor to make naan and you can make a pot of chili even if you’re hours away from your spice cabinet. Improvise!

So far, with the bounty that is our ongoing tomato harvest, I’ve made two batches of salsa, one pot of plain marinara sauce suitable for pasta and pizza, and one rustic veggie-laden pot of sauce I used on a hearty sausage ravioli.

The tomato sauce with chunky peppers, onion, basil and oregano owes its consistency to a potato masher. Leftovers went a long way on some orzo cooked up for a few of our toddler’s lunches and dinners as well.

Chunky Garden Tomato Sauce

• 3 lbs. fresh tomatoes, peeled and roughly chopped.
• 1 cup chopped onion
• 1 cup chopped green pepper
• 3 cloves chopped garlic
• 1/4 cup chopped fresh basil
• 1 tsp dried oregano
• 1/2 cup red wine
• olive oil
• salt
• pepper

1. Coat the bottom of a heavy pot with olive oil and saute onion, pepper and garlic until fragrant and soft. Add tomatoes, herbs, wine, and salt and pepper to taste.

2. Cook, covered, on medium low for 30 minutes, stirring occasionally. With potato masher, break down tomatoes to preferred texture. Simmer without a lid until sauce thickens.

There’s no need to build your own pizza oven or to heat up the kitchen to sweltering temperatures. If you want to make your own pizza pies, light up the grill and pile on seasonal toppings.

Sure, ordering dinner may be marginally easier, but to have full creative control of toppings and keep an eye on the wallet, homemade is the way to go. In the time it would take the delivery boy to arrive, fresh dough will be ready to go.

Using a pizza stone on the grill is best; they are inexpensive at most home or big box stores. If not, use a cookie sheet to cook the pizza. Let either preheat (on high) to get a crispy crust.

Here’s my favorite dough recipe, one from celebrity Cat Cora:

Easy Pizza Dough

• 2 cups flour
• 1 ½ tsp salt
• ¼ cup warm water (100 degrees or so)
• ½ cup room-temperature water
• 3 Tbsp olive oil
• ½ package of dry active yeast (1 1/8 tsp)

1. Add the warm water into a small mixing bowl or a standard 2 cup measure, sprinkle the yeast over the warm water and let stand until the yeast softens, 3 to 5 minutes. Mix slightly to dissolve yeast and allow it to proof for another 15 minutes in a warm spot in the kitchen. Add the room temperature water and 1 tablespoon of the olive oil to the yeast mixture and stir to combine.

2. Measure the flour and the salt into the bowl of a stand mixer. Combine on very low speed with the paddle attachment. Slowly add the liquid ingredients to the dry, and increase the speed of the mixer slightly to incorporate the mass. Stop the mixer and replace the paddle with a dough hook if you have one. Knead until the dough becomes smooth and begins to pull away from the sides of the bowl, about 4 minutes.

3. Place the dough on a floured board and knead the dough by hand for another 1 to 2 minutes. Add flour to dust as needed to prevent sticking. Shape the dough into a ball and place in a very lightly oiled bowl and cover with a clean towel, let stand until dough doubles in size, about 1 hour.

When the dough has doubled in bulk, divide it into 6 equal pieces (about 6 ounces each). Set the pieces of dough being used on a sheet pan and cover with a clean towel or plastic wrap. (Dough not being used can be placed in the refrigerator or frozen until ready to use.) With a rolling pin on a lightly floured surface, roll each piece of dough as evenly as possible into a 10-inch circle, dusting lightly with flour, as necessary. (I never get six out of this recipe. Usually it’s two for us.)

I don’t have too much experience with figs, but I remember the first time I ate one, straight off a tree years ago. Warm and sweet, they didn’t really taste like Fig Newtons, but the faint crackle of the seeds made me feel like a child.

I thought if nothing else, I would just eat the fruit straight away. But then I asked for suggestions from friends and my head started to swim with the possibilities. This fruit is versatile. Should I wrap it in bacon or stuff it with cheese? Appetizer or dessert?

I started to consult my cookbooks. There was a dearth of fig entries. Finally, I took a look at Jamie Oliver’s jamie’s kitchen and found this recipe. Super easy and, as usual, I made my own substitutions for convenience’s sake. For starters, I used croissants instead of hot cross buns — a suggested alternative in the book.

After dinner we tucked into dessert, served with vanilla ice cream and my husband admitted he wasn’t a “fan of figs.” By the third bite he deemed the dish “epic.”

Scrumptious baked figs with mascarpone, orange, pistachios and hot cross buns

• 9 oz. mascarpone cheese (I only found 8 oz containers, so I threw in 1 oz of goat cheese)
• 1 handful of unsalted shelled pistachio nuts (I used walnuts)
• 4 Tbsp honey
• zest of 2 oranges and juice of 1
• 1 pat of butter
• 4 hot cross buns or currant buns (I used croissants)
• 12 nice ripe figs (green or black)
• 2 Tbsp confectioners’ sugar
• optional: 3 1/2 oz. bittersweet chocolate, broken into small pieces (I used dark chocolate)

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. In a bowl, combine the mascarpone, half the chopped nuts, half the honey, half the orange zest and the orange juice. If you like, you can also add the chocolate now. Mix and taste for sweetness — you may need a little more honey.

2. Butter an appropriately sized earthenware dish (I used a 13x9 Pyrex). Slice your hot cross buns any way you like into 4 or 5 pieces and lay these in the dish. With a sharp knife, carefully cut across the top of each fig, but not quite all the way through — you want to leave a hinged lid. Poke your finger into each fig to make a little extra room for the filling and spoon some of the mascarpone mix into the gap so it’s just overfilled. Keep any leftover filling aside. Place the figs over and around the buns. Drizzle with the remaining honey and spinkle with remaining nuts and orange zest. Dab any leftover mascarpone mix around the dish and dust entire dish with confectioners’ sugar.

3. Bake approximately 35 minutes, until the bread is golden and crisp and the figs “look yummy.” Serve with really cold creme fraiche or ice cream.

Our garden runneth over. Last year a garden disease took most of our tomatoes, so I almost forgot how many “love apples” (I love that term) we can harvest in one summer. I’ve already made pasta sauce, salsa and enjoyed one of my favorites — the fresh tomato, mozzarella and basil salad with a little bit of olive oil, salt and pepper.

If you’re already at a loss for what to do, let me get you moving in the right direction. You need to know how to peel your tomatoes. Once you master this you can turn your summer harvest into a base for any number of sauces or recipes.

I haven’t learned how to can my tomatoes yet, but I do have a pressure cooker now, so it could happen this year. I imagine having the ‘maters skinned will make for better preservation as well. There’s always freezing, too.

Did I mention it’s easy?

1. Wash your tomatoes, with a sharp knife make a shallow criss-cross starting your cut at the stem and around the bottom so there is an “X” on the bottom of the fruit.

2. Put all of the marked tomatoes in a large bowl, boil water and pour the hot water over the tomatoes. After a few minutes the skin will start to curl away and loosen.

3. Carefully remove the tomatoes from the hot water and gently peel and core the tomatoes.