This summer, I am living in a world largely without air conditioning and it's almost as if I've become another person. Gone are the cool days in the shaded office. Instead, I am at home, the long, hot days are unfolding before me, and the difference between indoors and outdoors changes and blurs in my mind. In summer, life has a different shape and moves at a different pace. My sleep is lighter and more restless, my skin is closer and more open to the world around me.
I tend to measure my life in terms of what I have produced, but summer confounds this. The days are long, and I move through them slowly. By what metric do you compare a cabinet repaired to a hike? Or a completed article to a day spent swimming? Perhaps I have rediscovered the ancient rhythms of summer vacation from my childhood. The computer will wait until tomorrow, but the peaches are on the tree today.
The same rich lethargy lies over me in the kitchen. Summer is glorious in food, and yet my cooking is sporadic. There are days where I eat only open face sandwiches, spread with soft goat cheese and topped with tomato slices and a sprinkling of sea salt. Salads become central -- lightly cooked spinach dressed in rice vinegar and sesame oil. Spaghetti squash with tomatoes and basil, lemon juice and cubes of mozzarella. Bread salad with artichoke hearts, peppers, capers and herbs.
In the evening, as the sky turns purple, I might have nothing more than a few figs and a glass of wine for dessert. You can't improve on perfection.
In the pagan community, most often we celebrate Lammas as a harvest of grain. Someday I will grow grain to so harvest. Really, I will. But for now, I have trouble connecting to such a harvest. I have spent almost no time at all in a field of wheat, and can only imagine how it grows, and ripens and the work that goes into its harvesting. Grain for me is a staple, but as my involvement with it usually begins with the bulk bin at the co-op, a bin that does not change with the turning of the year, I have only the most theoretical sense of its season.
In planning a harvest feast, I look for the first fruits of the sun, the sweet, ripe foreshadowing of the harvest. Among these, the edible fruits of the nightshade family are for me among the foremost treats of summer. Brightly colored and flavorful, they satisfy the senses without sitting like a lead weight in one's stomach. There is a sun-drenched richness to them, different entirely than the green produce from a spring garden. There is something exotic about the spicy bite of a pepper, or the drooping purple fruit of an eggplant. Something enticing and seductive in a tomato's resemblance to its poisonous cousin.
Peppers and tomatoes, of course, are perfectly suited to my urge to assemble rather than to cook food. Indeed, very little assembly is required. They can be nibbled, sliced or just as they are. But why stop there? They can be chopped and combined for salsa. They can be grilled. They can be stuffed. They can be pureed for sauces. (One can make a very respectable salsa verde simply by throwing a handful of tomatillos -- another nightshade cousin -- into a blender with several spicy green peppers, some garlic, a bit of cilantro, lime juice and salt.) They can be dried, picked, fried, roasted or juiced and they will be good.
Eggplant is another matter. Spongy and purple, eggplants can be bitter and can have the texture of styrofoam. A large number of people of my acquaintance suffered eggplant trauma as children, when their parents introduced the then-trendy food to the table without gathering first the knowledge of proper preparation. During a time when people were being encouraged to cook vegetables only lightly, eggplants suffered, for they do not respond well to such treatment. Eggplants are mysterious, and a touch temperamental, and yet may be my favorite of these foods.
The first rule of thumb for cooking eggplants is that the large, dark, almost-black eggplants that are most commonly available need to be cooked, and indeed, they most favor being cooked almost to death. (Alternately, chopping the eggplant into slices, sprinkling it with salt and allowing it to sit for at least a half an hour will draw out the bitter juices. But it still needs thorough cooking.) The thinner, often lighter-colored Asian eggplants are milder and more delicate, and will reward more tender treatment, but even they should not be given the light stir frying that leaves the insides almost raw.
The next thing you must know is that eggplants are fundamentally different in character from their new world cousins. Peppers and tomatoes have bright, clear flavors -- sweet, acid, and spicy -- that need little ornament. Eggplant is more subtle, and yet its flavor is richer and complex in a manner similar to that of meat, or of mushrooms. This is why grilled eggplant is often used as a substitute for meat in vegetarian cooking. Its luscious, smoky flavor is satisfying in a way matched by few vegetables.
Cooked properly, an eggplant can be firm and tender as it is in mousaka, where layers of eggplant serve roughly the same role that pasta does in lasagna. Eggplant can provide a savory base for dips, as it does in baba ganoush, where eggplant is baked in a hot oven until it deflates like a pricked tire, after which the insides are scooped out and blended with garlic, lemon, oil, tahini and salt. Or, it can be silky and succulent, as it is in the Sicilian relish Caponata.
Caponata
4 tablespoons olive
oil
1 large eggplant
1 medium onion,
chopped
3-4 large tomatoes, diced
4-6 cloves garlic
2-3 stalks celery
3 Tablespoons capers
(pickled)
1 handful pine nuts
1/2 cup red wine
vinegar
Salt to taste
Chop the eggplant into roughly centimeter-square cubes. Sauté in olive oil in a fairly large, thick-bottomed pot. Add onion, and sauté as long as you can manage over medium heat, until all the oil is absorbed and the eggplant begins to stick to the bottom of your pan. Add the rest of the ingredients, stirring until well mixed. Reduce heat, cover, and simmer for at least half an hour until the eggplant begins to fall apart and the whole mixture is a thick, dark brown relish. (If in doubt, cook it longer.)
Caponata can be served with bread or crackers, or over pasta, or pretty much any other way you can imagine. It keeps in sealed containers in the refrigerator for at least two weeks.
Tomato-Stuffed
Peppers
3 bell peppers
1-2 tomatoes
1 medium purple
onion
2 cloves garlic,
pressed
2 Tablespoons olive
oil
Salt to taste
1/2 cup bread crumbs
(optional)
Halve and core two of the peppers. Chop the third along with the tomato and onion, and combine these in a small bowl with the garlic, oil, salt, and breadcrumbs. Stuff the eggplants with this mixture, and bake in a hot oven for about 15 minutes.