End of Summer Vegetables

End of the summer vegetables are finally beginning to really mature. This summer has been so hot then cool that I was worried that the first frost would come before the tomatoes, squashes, eggplants and other late summer vegetables would get properly ripened. Well, September has come through for the farmers and we are the lucky recipients of the bounty.


Every year I make ratatouille with onions, tomatoes, zucchini and bell peppers and freeze it to savor the heady summer taste of the garden all year long. It is one of the most versatile dishes I have in my repertoire. Not only versatile, but it is delicious and easy to make, as well. Here is another example of a very healthy dish that is not particularly expensive at all.

There are lots of recipes for ratatouille, but it is a flexible recipe that you can put in things that you like and leave out what you don’t especially like. I found that through the years of raising my children, this dish, though composed of many vegetables that somebody or other didn’t like, was nevertheless very acceptable, particularly when served in the soup mode.

Ratatouille can be served as a soup with a crusty French bread crouton smothered with mozzarella cheese and broiled a la French Onion Soup. It can be served cold, as a side or condiment with roasts, steaks, hamburgers and fish. Or as a vegetable dish along side all of the above, but served hot. You can make your ratatouille soupy or thick. If you make it thick, you can add water or tomato juice to thin it out when you cook it.

Here is Julia Child’s recipe for ratatouille; I like it because she sautés everything separately so each vegetable retains its own particular flavor.

Preliminary salting
½ lb. eggplant
½ lb. zucchini (can be half yellow summer squash)
1 tsp. salt

Peel eggplant and cut into 1” cubes. Scrub zucchini under cold water, cut off and discard two ends and slice horizontally about ½ inch thick. Toss the vegetables together in a bowl with the salt and let stand 30 minutes. Drain; dry in a towel.

Sautéing

4 or more Tb olive oil
1 ½ cups sliced onions
1 cup sliced green peppers (about 2 peppers—can use red or yellow for one of the peppers)
2 cloves minced garlic
Salt and pepper
1 lb. tomatoes, peeled, seeded and juiced (or if you want a soupier dish, don’t juice the tomatoes)
3 Tbs. minced parsley

Heat olive oil in a large frying pan, then saute eggplant and zucchini cubes to brown lightly on both sides. Remove to side dish. Add more oil if necessary and cook onions and peppers slowly until soft. Stir in garlic and season with salt and pepper. Roughly chop tomato and place over onions and peppers. Cover pan and cook for 5 minutes, then uncover, raise heat and boil for several minutes until tomato juice has almost completely evaporated. Season with salt and pepper; fold in parsley.

Assembling and Baking

Spoon a third of the tomato mixture in the bottom of a 2 ½-quart flameproof casserole 2 inches deep. Arrange half of the eggplant and zucchini on top, then half the remaining tomatoes. Cover with the remaining eggplant and zucchini, and the last of the tomato mixture. Cover casserole and simmer over low heat for 10 minutes. Uncover, tip casserole and baste with the juices rendered and correct seasoning if necessary. Raise heat slightly and boil slowly until juices have almost entirely evaporated.

Marian and Nino Tracy wrote a very famous cookbook which appeared in bookstores on the day after Pearl Harbor in 1941. It was an instant hit and ushered in what was then a new idea—the casserole. A revised edition was published by Marian (sans Nino) in 1968 and it remains, today, one of the foremost casserole cookbooks ever published. The following recipe is a favorite of ours and is open to some manipulation with ingredients.

Summer Squash with Chili

1-1/2 cups cubed stale bread
Salt and pepper
1 lb. ground beef (lean)
2 Tbsp. olive oil
1 large onion, minced
½ green pepper, chopped without seeds
1 Tbsp. chili powder
1 Tbsp chopped fresh basil or 1 tsp. dried
Grated peel ½ lemon
2 8-oz. cans tomato sauce
2 lbs. small yellow squashes, salted and cubed but not peeled (see preliminary salting in previous recipe)
2 Tbsp. butter

Brown bread cubes in a hot oven, being careful not to burn. Salt and pepper ground beef and saute in olive oil with onions and green pepper. Mix chili powder, basil, grated lemon peel and tomato sauce with the mixture in the skillet. Take a deep buttered casserole and place half of the squash and bread cubes on the bottom. Dot with half of the butter. Spread with half of the meat mixture and repeat. This needs no other liquid because the squash will cook down. Cover tightly and bake in 350 deg. oven for 30 minutes. Serves 4.