A (Fridge) Harvest Feast

I had the chance to spend a lovely day upstate (up the river, if you will) and fall was definitely in the air. Being surrounded by the bright foliage and all-around-foodiness of the Hudson Valley put me in the mood for some fall harvest-y grub. But this harvest was coming directly from an overstuffed fridge.

For a dinner gathering the other week I'd found a New York Magazine recipe for butternut squash crostini which I'd subbed in as a salad topping for some arugula. Butternut squash roasted with olive oil, sea salt, honey, capers and walnuts. Yum. So I thought maybe some of the same flavors could be spread out over a whole meal. The acorn squash that had been hanging out in the fridge for a week got a little roasty-roast with some honey and olive oil and lots of sea salt. Capers' saltiness balanced out the bite of arugula and sweet orange sections in a salad. And for some added harvest festival feasting, I roasted potatoes with apples. Even though this was a veggie-only dinner, it was rich in flavor and left us happily full on this fall evening.

Roasted Acorn Squash With Honey

Adapted from The Pioneer Woman's Acorn Squash

1 Acorn Squash (served 2 easily)

1 Tablespoon olive oil

2 Tablespoons honey

Sea salt

Heat the oven to 350F. Slice the acorn squash into slices. You need a heavy chefs knife. Be careful! Place into a baking dish and drizzle with olive oil and sea salt. Roast 20 minutes. Take out and drizzle with honey and bake another 30 minutes. Then turn up the heat to 400 and bake another 10-15 minutes until the tops of the squash look golden brown.

Roast Apples and Potatoes

3 red potatoes, peeled and chopped

1 apple, cored and diced

olive oil

salt

With the oven turned up to 400F, toss the potatoes and apples with olive oil on a foil-covered baking sheet. Bake 20 minutes (while acorn squash is cooling for 5 minutes).

Arugula, Orange and Caper Salad

2 cups arugula, rinsed and dried

1 teaspoon capers, drained (I pull them out of the jar with a fork)

1/4 cup parsley, minced

1 orange

1 teaspoon Dijon mustard

olive oil

Wash and dry the arugula. Toss in capers and parsley. Cut an orange in half and cut out the sections. Add the orange sections to the salad. With the two leftover orange halves, squeeze the juice into a small bowl. Add the Dijon mustard, olive oil, black pepper and salt and whisk. Toss the salad with the dressing.

On the Waterfront

Sometimes, Mr. Lemon and I are lucky enough to get our thrifty-selves out of the city for an adventure. We're very fortunate to have wonderful friends like Mr. and Mrs. Tomato (they chose their name) who invited us out to their beautiful boat on the Northfork of Long Island this weekend. It was, in a word, lovely.

Boats may appear larger in rearview memory

via Greenport Chamber of Commerce

I'm not a full-fledged sailor yet, so my job was to figure out dinner. For all those NY cooks who think that their apartment's kitchen is small, try getting dinner ready in a real galley kitchen. It's a fete that calls for using as few pots as possible and ingredients that you can use up in one night (because the boat's refrigerator can only hold so much.) Zero waste, easy clean up...just my kind of cooking.

And being on the waterfront, we had to make something fishy for dinner. Mrs. Tomato and I splurged, picking up a locally caught slab of monkfish, which the gentlemen-sailors grilled on shore with a little lemon, olive oil, salt and pepper. It was delicious and hearty in a way that white fish rarely is. Almost like lobster, is how Mr. Tomato described it.

We also marinated vegetables from the Northfork's famous farm stands: eggplant, zucchini, onion, cherry tomatoes plus olive oil, garlic and salt. On (soaked) wooden skewers, these veggie kabobs cooked up quickly for a healthy side dish--and one dish cooking, as well, since we marinated, skewered and served all in the same bowl. And of course, no summer meal is complete without some sweet white corn and a generous glass of white wine.

Sadly, no photos were taken. These tired shipmates were just happy to enjoy the food, wine and good company in the dark, cozy galley.

As we were getting our fishy friend ready, I learned from Mrs. Tomato that I was not the only one who had a tin of sardines lurking in my pantry waiting for action. I shared my recent sardine savvy, including this recipe, which is sort of a re-constructed caponata that I took apart and put back together as a way to bring those sardines out of their tin.

Eggplant Stacks with Sardine, Ricotta and Capers

2 Tablespoons olive oil

1 small onion, chopped

2 cloves garlic, minced

1 tin sardines packed in marinara sauce

1 teaspoon red wine vinegar

1 Tablespoon capers, drained

1 small eggplant, sliced into 1/4-inch disks

1/4 cup ricotta

basil chiffonade to garnish

In a small saute pan heat 1 Tablespoon olive oil and add onion and 1 clove minced garlic to cook over medium heat. When the onions begin to look translucent, add the entire contents of the sardine tin and start to break up the sardines with your spoon. Simmer.

In the meantime, in a larger nonstick saute pan heat 1 Tablespoon olive oil and when hot add the eggplant disks in one layer along with 1 clove minced garlic. Cook on both sides, turning once until the eggplant's interior starts to brown and is soft. It will look a little liquidy -- this is good.

Finish the sauce with the capers, red wine vinegar, salt and pepper. Plate the eggplant slices, topping each with the sardine sauce, a dollop of ricotta cheese and some finely cut basil.

This could be a nice starter, or a lighter supper to give a little seaside flavor to a land-lubber's weeknight.