Summer

Our garden gets a little more ambitious every year.

Last summer, we had three cherry tomato plants, a bunch of cucumbers, hot peppers that weren't even close to being hot, lots of herbs, and a crop of long beans that yielded a serving for Margy and me about three times.

This time around, we've got one grape tomato and one beefsteak tomato plant, more cukes, jalapeños that might actually hold a little heat (if they'd just mature already), oodles of pole beans (green, yellow, and purple), arugula and mixed baby greens (wonderful but now succumbing to the burgeoning summer sizzle), and again many different herbs.

And beets. Some of which are now ready. The leaves and stalks have been gorgeous -- that deep red-purple color that there's no point in calling anything else but beet red. Once the bulbs poked out of the soil and showed themselves as relatively plump and ready to be eaten, it was time to go.

Of course, one of these plants (we have three) offers only a few small beets, so that's all I had to work with today. Using a recipe from Deborah Madison's Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone, I cubed the beets and roasted them with olive oil and salt and pepper until they just began to caramelize. As I removed them from the oven, I popped a piece in my mouth. Sweet and earthy. Ready to become a salad. I dressed them with oil, vinegar, and fennel seeds and let them steep awhile.

Margy shaved some farmers'-market fennel ("What do you do with the tops?" said the woman who sold me the fennel, just as I was wondering myself) on the mandoline, almost shaving her palm along with it. What is it about that device? Me, I basically refuse to touch it, even though I'd love to put it to use. It terrifies me.

Bottom line: Beets plus fennel in three forms -- bulb, fronds, seeds -- equals deliciousness. Just be sure to eat a sweet salad like this along with something salty or sour, or else you'll think you've skipped dinner and gone right for (an admittedly very healthy) dessert.

Homegrown Sides

Tonight was burger night, which is always exciting, but the real thrill was in the accompanying long beans and tomatoes, because we grew them ourselves. I know I've been going on and on about our tomatoes, but it's still a rarity for us to have a vegetable side dish that's entirely our own. Our garden is small and not exactly abundant, and this was only the second or third time since July that I was able to harvest enough long beans to feed us a proper portion.

Next year there will be lots more beans, because they're so vibrant and delicious (and stingy with their yield). Tonight I cut them up and boiled them for only about 90 seconds until crisp-tender, and then I tossed them with roasted tomatoes in olive oil while still warm. The tomato-flavored oil on its own tastes great on green beans, and having some little round tomatoes in there just takes the whole thing over the top. The veggies were fresh and tangy, and they'd only traveled about 30 feet to reach our table. Gets me every time.

It's Almost Fall

Tomato season is coming to a close, and I'm not happy about it. All summer long I've been pruning and picking and watering, and soon there will be a void in my life. Sure, the sungolds have gone yellow and the cherry tomatoes don't pack as much punch as they did a month ago, but I'm still out there like the loyal gentleman farmer I aspire to be.

This was probably the last opportunity to use our beloved tomatoes with abandon. I'd roasted a big batch with garlic and thyme, and here I simply tossed cooked gemelli with the mixture and finished the dish with a little olive oil and sliced basil and a scattering of fried ham (I don't think I've ever fried ham two days in a row, but the last bit needed to go). If the moment was bittersweet, the sauce was delicious.

A message to supermarket tomatoes during the colder months: I'm sorry, but I'm looking the other way. I have nothing against you -- your deep red color is enticing -- but there's only room on our counter for the true Jersey tomatoes of summer. No offense.

Tomato Sandwich, with Ham

Margy wasn't around and I was about to go out for the evening, so I improvised myself a sandwich.

I'm not a huge fan of subs and cold-cut sandwiches, but hot sandwiches are a different story. Hamburgers, meatball hoagies, po' boys -- that's my scene. Tonight I was mainly looking for an excuse to eat some of the roasted tomatoes that were sitting in the fridge, and I figured a fried ham sandwich would be a worthy vehicle. Earlier in the week I'd bought some ham for lunches (the one cold cut I do like), so I had everything I needed.

I cooked a few slices of ham quickly in a skillet with a drop of olive oil, browned a roll under the broiler, found an ear of leftover corn, and that was that. The meat was just protein -- this was all about bread and condiment.

Tastes of Summer

Margy and I checked our crave-o-meters, and for some reason only a steak would do.

I didn't spend $26 or anything, but I did find a nice rib eye. When it came off the grill to rest for a few minutes, I brushed two rolls with olive oil and melted butter and grilled them as an accompaniment. Then I topped the sliced rib eye with tomatoes from our garden that I'd roasted with garlic and thyme (a nifty condiment that pretty much goes well with anything). The whole thing could have easily been eaten as a sandwich, but we went with the knife-and-fork method.

At the farmers' market yesterday it was clear that it's now or never as far as corn is concerned. It was a bad year for corn all around, so by mid-September the tables were stacked with skinny little ears, which had all been picked over and partially shucked. But we found a few decent ones, and it was still summer for at least another night.

Sungolds and Cherries Everywhere

The tomatoes keep coming, and I'll keep using them on pasta until the first frost.

Tonight I made linguine with shrimp and clams, and, as always, tossed in a bunch of halved tomatoes right at the end. Seafood pasta is one of Margy's favorites, and she was glad I made enough for her to have some for lunch in a day or two.

I'm trying to block out the fact that summer is almost over. It's been such a treat to have instant access to these tomatoes, not to mention to lots and lots of herbs, plus cucumbers and the occasional long bean. I keep fantasizing about moving someplace where we can keep a garden growing year round.

The Clock Is Ticking

Since I'm at home and Margy commutes to an office, I try my best to have a handle on dinner by the time she gets home.

Not tonight.

Not only was I running late in my attempts to prepare a pretty time-consuming dish for a weeknight, but I also had a last-minute handicap, thanks to ShopRite: I was dealing with almost two pounds of improperly cleaned squid.

ShopRite is my squid destination, and this marks the second time in a week I've had a problem. Well, the first time wasn't really a problem per se -- they were just out of the stuff, and I respect that. But tonight I had to spend valuable time slicing the eyes from the tentacles and pulling the quills out of some of the bodies. All the while I'm thinking, Who the hell did this job, a kid off the street? Clearly the person had never handled squid in his or her life, and I was paying for it, literally and figuratively.

So Margy basically walks in to find a mess. No intoxicating cooking aromas, just me, elbow deep in a pile of squid and in a foul mood. I poured a glass of wine down her throat to help buy me some time.

For her part, she was an angel. She could sense how stressed I was, and so, as hungry as she was rapidly becoming, she never really let on. We cleaned up and did all the dishes while the squid, which by now I had stuffed, was simmering away on the stove. For my part, I rushed things a little, turning off the heat well before I would have preferred.

That meant the squid was a little tough, but it was by no means a disaster. And I'm still excited enough about these wonderful cherry tomatoes we're growing that their presence in my squid stew was enough to keep me from the dark side. They went in whole, just a few minutes before serving, and once again they were like little bombs of flavor, exploding with the sweet and tangy essence of tomato.

Bumper Crop

These cherry tomatoes that we've been growing are tiny wonders, and they're coming hard and fast now.

The trick is to barely cook them and let them keep their tangy flavor and plump juiciness, so for this pasta sauce, just like the last one, I threw them in at the very end. First I crisped up some pancetta in a tiny bit of olive oil. Then I removed the pancetta to drain, adding a little more oil and some garlic and herbs. All the while I was cooking the pasta, and when it was almost done, back into the oil went the pancetta, and then I threw in the tomatoes to let them get hot.

Wow, growing your own food. Ecco il contadino!

Hello, Beans

The noteworthy thing about tonight's turkey keema, besides the fact that we ate it with warm tortillas, which is pretty damn fun, is that the meal marked the emergence of our crop of long beans. That's right -- I was able to harvest five whole beans, and since those suckers really are very long (18 inches, I'd say), five was just about enough to get us our vegetables. They were so fresh that they only needed to be boiled for about a minute, and they stayed bright and crisp. As with our tomatoes, we were struck by the beans' clear, delicious flavor.

I can't stop fantasizing about having a huge vegetable garden. Maybe someday.

Our Garden Grows!

Margy and I have a tiny yard out back, and each year our garden has become more ambitious. Last summer we had a potted sungold tomato plant, which would yield, oh, about three grape tomatoes a week. We also grew green beans, at an equally stingy production rate.

But this June Margy put in a proper garden bed, and it's made a big difference. It contains two cucumber plants and three tomato plants (two sungolds and one that produces little red guys), plus some "hot" peppers, which so far have been disappointingly mild, and a bit of parsley. We also have long beans and assorted herbs growing in pots and little plots around the place.

All summer I'd been waiting to get a good cache of tomatoes so I could make a clam sauce like ones we had in Naples, where the tomatoes are cut in half and added right at the end, so they get hot but don't break down much. That day finally came.

It's amazing to note the difference between tomatoes you grow yourself and ones that have traveled from great distances to reach the supermarket. There's no comparison in terms of flavor and freshness. Our little specimens explode in a tangy burst of tomatoness, and that characteristic held up in this sauce. But even supermarkets can get some good stuff at this time of year, so I recommend throwing a bunch of halved tomatoes into any oil-based pasta sauce for a colorful change of pace.