Grilled Focaccia with Herbs and Garlic

This is easy and awesome.  Make your own dough if you have time or use a ball of frozen dough from the grocery store.  Enjoy it now while the weather's hot and the herbs are coming into full production.

1 batch pizza dough
Olive oil
1/2 cup chopped fresh basil and parsley
4 cloves garlic, minced

Pat the dough out to about 1/2-inch thick, maybe a little less.  Oil both sides liberally and set aside on a plate.

In a bowl, combine the chopped herbs and garlic with about 2 Tbsp olive oil and set aside.

Get your grill going pretty hot, then carefully transfer the dough from the plate to the grill.  Close the cover and grill for about 3 minutes.  Use tongs to flip the focaccia over and quickly spread the cooked side with the garlic and herb mixture.  Close the grill lid again and cook for about 2 minutes more.  Remove from the grill.

Let the focaccia cool enough to handle, then tear or cut into pieces and serve.

Serves 4-6.

Grilled Summer Squash and Onions

Grilled onions - you can use any kind you like, including scallions cut into 1- or 2-inch lengths - are flavorful, sweet, and delicious. They work well here with some of the first zucchini or summer squash of the season. Use any variety of summer squash, or a mix. Red onions make a particularly attraction combination with the squash.

4 cups cubed summer squash
2 cups sliced or cubed onion or scallions
2 Tbsp olive oil
Salt and pepper to taste
Chopped fresh herbs (optional)

Toss the squash and onion with the olive oil, salt and pepper. Grill in a grill basket over medium heat for 20-30 minutes, stirring occasionally.

Serve hot, topped if desired with a sprinkling of chopped fresh herbs (basil, parsley, oregano, dill, whatever sounds good).

Serves 4-6.

Drying Herbs

The herbs in my garden are getting big and bushy, and lovely big bunches are showing up at the farmers market. It's a good time to think about drying some for use over the winter. You can dry herbs in a dehydrator or your oven, but the easiest method is just to hang them up to air dry. This method works well for basil, oregano, parsley, dill, rosemary, and sage, among others. Just bind several stalks together with string or a rubber band, then hang upside down in an airy location out of direct sunlight. You can do this inside a paper bag if you like, to catch any bits that fall off. If you are drying for seeds (with dill, for example, or coriander), you definitely want to use the paper bag--in that case, once everything is dry, you give it a good shake and the seeds will collect in the bottom of the bag.

The length of time that herbs need to hang to dry will vary with weather conditions and the herb you are using. Usually you'll need a week or two. Once the herb is dry and crumbly, you can transfer the leaves to an airtight container and store out of direct sunlight.

Late Spring Crops

As we get further into the summer, the number and variety of foods in season locally will explode, but for now we are still waiting and watching eagerly as each new one appears. Or at least I am!

Spring starts out with greens grown in hoophouses, asparagus, rhubarb, some herbs, and maybe some leeks that were either overwintered or grown in a hoophouse. But now that we are getting further along into the season, we are seeing green garlic, radishes, bunching onions and spring onions and a shift to greens grown in the field, while the asparagus, rhubarb, and herbs continue.

Now, at the beginning of June, we're at a tipping point. The really good stuff, the crops that feel like treats, are just about to start coming in. I have been harvesting my earliest snap peas in the garden and I expect to start seeing peas--snap, snow, and shelling--in the farmers market quite soon. The garlic in my garden has also just started forming scapes (stalks with would-be flowers), which are delicious. Growers cut them off to encourage the plants to form larger bulbs, so we'll be seeing scapes in the farmers market soon, too. And, of course, STRAWBERRIES! If we're lucky here in Greenfield, some of the vendors from further south in the valley might have early strawberries this weekend. Otherwise, we'll need to wait just a little longer. I am personally looking forward to picking some, maybe at Uppingil Farm in Gill, so I can stash them away in the freezer as well as enjoying them now.

The folks at the farmers market are always a bit ahead of my garden, it seems--some because they are further south and some because they are growing in hoophouses. So it probably won't be too many more weeks before we start to see other things like baby carrots, more summer leeks, more herbs, and maybe early fennel. As I wait for each new item to make its appearance, I feel like a kid waiting for Christmas--right down to imagining all the wonderful things I'm going to do with the anticipated treats.

Herbed Grilled Steak

Saturday night we treated ourselves to steak on the grill, a nice sirloin from Bostrom's Farm. This treatment for steak comes from Alice Waters, described in her book The Art of Simple Food (a great cookbook, by the way, with lots of discussion of simple technique). You can use a variety of herbs depending on what you have available; a mixture is nice. I used oregano, parsley, and basil from my garden. Rosemary and marjoram work well, too.

Steak(s)
Salt (about 1 1/2 tsp per 2 servings of steak)
Pepper to taste (be generous)
Finely chopped fresh herbs (about 3 Tbsp for every 2-3 servings of steak)
Olive oil

About an hour before you plan to grill, take the steak out of the refrigerator.

Combine the salt, pepper, and herbs with a teaspoon or so of olive oil (just enough to form a bit of a paste that you can spread. Spread it all over the steak and let sit for an hour.

Cook the steak over a hot fire to your desired degree of doneness (about 8-10 minutes total cooking time for medium rare). Keep in mind that grassfed beef is best when not too well done because it has less fat in it.