Originally published August 2024 in the Napa Valley Register
By: Carine Hines
Come February, I always long for summer produce and all the wonderfully complex dishes you can create with things like eggplant, tomatoes, hot peppers, stone fruit, etc. Yet in the winter I find myself surrounded by cruciferous crops… and after a while it’s hard to find new ways to cook broccoli. During the long winter evenings when the house is cold, I would give anything to spend hours chopping, dicing, and mincing summer veggies.
Unfortunately, once August rolls around and summer produce is at its zenith, my motivation to cook plummets. It’s not just the dread of turning on an oven on a hot summer day, or the fact that heavy meals don’t sound appetizing. I am simply too tired to cook from the months of June - September. In my house we live off tomato and cucumber salads, with maybe a few boiled potatoes and green beans tossed in the mix. And so much fresh fruit cut up and eaten straight off the vine or tree. It’s a wonderful life really, but I know that come winter I will regret not making more beautiful dishes when I had the chance.
To remedy this dilemma, I have a few solutions. One, I am the proud owner of two chest freezers that every summer I fill with tomatoes, ratatouille, cut up sweet peppers, whole shallots, melted onions, cherry tomato confits, and sliced up stone fruit. Once winter arrives I will turn the fruit into jams, tarts, or cakes (sometimes I’ll even use them for cocktails!), the tomatoes, peppers, and shallots get diced up almost every day and tossed in soups, beans, and stews, the melted onions become soup bases, and the ratatouille is savored for special occasions.
Second, I try to enjoy summer produce DURING the summer, by working less. Luckily we have more help around the farm this year, and it means we can stop working by 5pm (still a 12 hour day) with some time to spare for dinner. Despite this, it’s still a struggle to cook. I know how much I need to cook, how much my soul needs the connection to the food I grow, and the art of taking something so inherently flavorful and nutritious and turning it into a complex explosion of textures and tastes grounds me more than any therapy session. When I cook, I don’t do so alone. I have my grandmothers by my side nudging me to vary from the recipe or to follow it to the T. By cooking by produce at its freshest, I worship all the food we worked so hard to grow. Perhaps this is why cooking is so tiring, because cooking is so much more than eating. Cooking is a connection to our past, present, and future. And cooking is the final step for a farmer journey.
To cook more in the summer, a farmer must simply make time to cook, no matter the to do list. This is why every week I find something new to try, something that requires a few extra steps or pots and pans. Recently, I made a Tian (this time it was my French grandmother’s soul telling me to take the recipe in a completely different direction). This Tian was perhaps the most delicious thing I ever made. Slicing summer veggies through a mandolin, lovingly layering them with herbs, salt, and gallons of olive oil made for a phenomenally delicious dinner and left me feeling as happy as a Sungold tomato on a vine. The only must in this recipe is to take the time to slice the vegetables thinly and to not hold back on the olive oil. I highly recommend serving with warm bread to soak the juices. Enjoy!
Tian
Serves 4-6
Adapted from Gabrielle Hamilton’s recipe in New York Times Cooking
INGREDIENTS
3 tbsp salted butter
2 large yellow onions
3 medium-large summer squash
4-5 large yellow waxy potatoes
2 Italian eggplants
6 red tomatoes
1 pint of cherry tomatoes
A few basil leaves
Herbes de Provence
Salt and Pepper
Olive Oil
DIRECTIONS
Heat oven to to 375 degrees.
Wash vegetables and thinly slice to ~¼ inch think the onions, summer squash, and eggplant. Ideally you would use a Japanese mandolin or, if you have it, a nice sharp cheese grater. Thinly slice tomatoes to ~¼ inch thick with a serrated knife (you may need to do this with the eggplant as well).
In a large cast iron pan, melt butter and coat bottom of pan. Turn heat to medium low and layer bottom with 2 potato layers. Season with salt, pepper, and Herbes de Provence (in between each vegetable layer you can lightly season with this combination). Cover pan and let steam ~5 minutes.
Layer with ⅓ the onions and ½ the eggplant. Layers should only be about 1 layer thick. Douse with olive oil.
Follow with ½ the summer summer squash, then ½ the red tomatoes. Douse with olive oil.
Layer with ⅓ the onions, then the remaining eggplant, followed by summer squash, then tomatoes. Remember to add seasonings and olive oil between layers. Cover pan and steam on medium low heat while preparing cherry tomatoes.
Slice cherry tomatoes in half, remove cover from pan and sprinkle cherry tomatoes over Tian. Bake in oven for 30 minutes.
Let dish sit before slicing sprinkling with torn basil and cutting like a pie. Serve with bread.