I can't believe I've let the summer go by without a post! But though summer’s almost over, temperatures here in Davis are in the mid-80’s, so we’re still grilling most nights and eating dinner on the patio. Last night we used only our oven for baked salmon with herb butter and a vegetable tian. I started making tians more than 20 years ago, when I discovered some recipes for them in Martha Stewart’s “Quick Cook” series. Last night I combined leeks, squash, potatoes and tomatoes, but eggplant works well too. Here’s what I used, which made about 3 generous servings; if you double the recipe, you will need a somewhat larger sauté pan!
¼ cup of olive oil, plus more for top
1 medium leek, sliced, with about 2-3 inches of green
2 small potatoes, 1 red and 1 Yukon gold, thinly sliced
1 medium round green squash (zucchini would work too), sliced
½ of a yellow squash, sliced (the other half was no good!)
2 small heirloom tomatoes, sliced
Ground pepper and salt (Costo’s grinders are terrific for the kitchen!)
¼ cup of grated parmesan
Preheat the oven to 425º.
Sauté the leeks in the olive oil in a medium oven-proof sauté pan until slightly wilted, and move to one side if you plan to cook the tian in the pan.
Arrange vegetables in the sauté pan, or a pie plate or a shallow baking dish, overlapping and alternating them (but don’t worry about have equal amounts of each). Sprinkle the leeks on top.
Grind black pepper and salt over the dish and sprinkle with the grated parmesan. Drizzle another tablespoon of olive oil over the top, if desired.
Bake for 30 to 40 minutes, or until the potatoes are tender. Serve immediately or at room temperature.
The salmon with herb butter is a variation on a dish I usually make with an olive butter. The herbs included about 2 Tb. purple basil, a small amount of marjoram, 6-8 chives, and about 2-3 Tb. of chopped parsley, but garlic could have been added as well. I added about 3 Tb. of softened butter to the chopped herbs and dotted the fish with about half of it—I saved the remainder to add at the end. Before topping the salmon with the butter, I ground pepper and salt over it and brushed it with olive oil. The salmon can cook in the same over as the tian, for about 10 minutes at the end.
Our summer garden was a bust this year, with small plants and few veggies. We planted 5 tomatoes this year, and even the cherries are doing poorly--barely enough for our salad each night. Luckily, Davis has a fantastic farmer's market, so we've been regular visitors. Our squash and cucumber plants, three in all, appear to be dead or nearly so, and though the tomato plants still have a few tomatoes, they are pretty pathetic. Clearly, we will have to do some major soil amendment next year and maybe rethink our watering system. I'm really not sure what the problem is. That healthy-looking plant spilling over the side is tarragon--much more than we could ever use!
We will probably have basil for a couple more months, but even those plants are much smaller than last year. Four small eggplants may be ready for the weekend, but that plant too is far less hardy than last year's. It's been disappointing, to say the least!
I just returned from a week at a spa in Baja CA, and, boy, it couldn’t have come at a better time. It’s a beautiful spot, about 40 miles from San Diego, and we had perfect weather while there. I particularly enjoyed two-mile morning hikes, Pilates and water aerobics, and I also attended writer’ workshops in the afternoons. We had a cooking class one evening at the ranch’s cooking school, which has 8-acre organic garden attached. Unfortunately, I did not take any pictures at the cooking school or gardens.