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Tromboncino Rampicante

11 Tuesday Sep 2012

Posted by in Green, Squashes, Summer, Vegetables, White, Yellow

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Sorry it’s taken me so long to post; I was busy giving birth to this:

Which leaves little time for farmer’s marketing and even less time for cooking and blogging.  But how do you NOT buy this when you see it at the market?

Especially if you like zucchini, which I do.  I’m a little annoyed at the Summer Squash selection this year, frankly – everyone’s got a blog post about what to do with all that zucchini that is so clearly taking over your garden that you need to make it into breads, fritters, cakes, casseroles, and other creative, delicious-sounding recipes, and here I am, zucchini-less.  My garden won’t grow (probably because I forget to water it), and none of the sellers at the market seem so flush with zucchini that they’re marking down the prices into the ridiculously-cheap category, which means if I buy zucchini, I’m buying it to use for its sweet, squashy self, not to use it up.

Which I guess is a gigantic tangent to: How I Found a New Yummy Zucchini.  Usually called Tromboncino Zucchini or Zucchetta Rampicante, it’s also sometimes just called Squash with some horribly misspelled version of one of those names in parentheses on the farmer’s handwritten sign.

Summer squashes have far more variety in flavor than one might expect, given that they’re always lumped into that same massive category.  There’s crookneck and zucchini and patty pan and little stripey ones that the husband and I like to refer to as hand grenades…  Rampicante is slightly sweet and slightly nutty.  It’s most similar to zucchini in flavor, but a little nuttier.  I don’t think it’s as mealy as crookneck, but sources differ on how to avoid the mealies with this guy: some say that the young ones start out quite mealy, others say that the younger/smaller fruits will always be the sweeter and more flavorful, so if you’re worried about mealiness, go with one of those.  How to tell?  They turn into a trombone as they grow, so shorter, straighter squash are what you would look for, though it’s possible to grow them straighter by trellising them, so again, look for short if you’re looking for young.  This sucker is pretty full-grown, maybe 2 or 3 feet long if you stretched him out.  Personally, I think the problem is steaming at any size.  People are constantly telling me to steam squash because it’s so healthful that way, but to me, it tastes like mealy baby food.  Not a fan of any kind of steamed squash, frankly.

They have a very pale green skin, sometimes almost pale yellow or tan, sometimes so light they look almost white.  They tend to have varied faint white stripes like some zucchini varieties as well.  The really nice thing about this variety is that all the seeds form in the bulbous part at the end, the way seeds all collect in the center of hard squash.  That means you’ve got this whole long length of stem with no seeds.  It’s drier and firmer than zucchini, though the pores near the skin do weep when you cut it, but I imagine if you wanted to make something akin to Rampicante Parmesan or Fried Zucchini (dredging in flour and deep frying) it would probably be excellent for that since it is drier than its cousin who can sometimes get mushy.  The skin is edible as well – a bit tougher than zucchini skin, but nowhere near winter squash toughness or even delicata squash or something in which people tell you the skin is edible but the texture’s tough and awful…   All this means that Rampicante are really, really easy to work with, so you get a lot of bang for your buck.  Which is nice, because I’ve only seen one or two sellers with them ever, which means they’re twice the price of other summer squash per pound.  C’est la vie for the experimental veggie eater.

Actually, that’s the weird part about Tromboncino – pluck it early, and you have got a summer squash that’s basically edible from end to end minus the seeds.   Let it grow big and keep it around, and the skin will grow tough like winter squash, so it stores well.  If you’re worried about your personal fruit having too tough a skin, go ahead and peel it.  I’ve only bought it as a summer squash; the online consensus seems to be that as it matures into a winter squash, the texture gets stringier, more watery, and less flavorful, much like the interior of a carving pumpkin, so I think I’ll stick with the summer harvest for now.

Like I said with the zucchini this year, I’m not wasting this puppy on “use it up” recipes, but you don’t need to.  Zucchini is often easy to julienne or similar because of its straight shape; rampicante is easier to slice into rounds.  If you have a food processor, chop the neck into straighter sections before putting through the slicing blade and you’ll have a gagillion Rampicante rounds in no time.  If you put the bent part in, you’ll have long slices instead.

I like to saute in olive oil and garlic and toss into practically any dish – it does take a bit to cook through to the center if you slice too thick, so try to keep them just a cm or 2 in width if you’re slicing by hand.  Half-inch rounds are just too big.  They’re also nice tossed with olive oil and salt and roasted on 400 or 450 like beet chips until crisp, or crisp-ish really.  They’re a great alternative to potato chips or some other horrible for you snack.

As for the bulb, scoop out the seeds, and chop the rest up any way you like.  Again, I always prefer sauteed in a little olive oil or roasted over steamed, but if you feel like trying it steamed, steam the bulb end since your pieces won’t be uniform in shape.  Hmm…maybe a mashed Rampicante?  Like mashed potatoes, but more summery?  I may learn to like steamed squash after all…

Rampicante with Sausage, Beet Greens and Goat Cheese

  • Rampicante Zucchini
  • Beet greens, stalks removed and greens sliced or torn into bite-sized pieces
  • Sausage, chopped into bite-size pieces (I prefer sweet Italian Chicken Sausage from Trader Joe’s)
  • Pasta (I like spaghetti in this recipe)
  • olive oil
  • goat cheese

Notes: There are no measurements because it really is to taste and depends on the number of people being served.  Half a trombone zucchini served 2 hungry adults and a toddler; likewise half a bunch of beet greens, but we’re veggie-happy and everything depends on how big a bunch you get.  For the sausage, my lazy strategy is to simply hold the sausage over the pan and use kitchen shears to lop of pieces – no cutting board to disinfect afterwards!  Same thing with the goat cheese:  I buy it in a log and just use a fork to hack off chunks right onto the plate.

Slice your rampicante however you like and remove the lower stalks from your beet greens, chopping them into 1/2 to 1-inch size pieces.  Saute in olive oil until everything starts to soften, then add sausage.  Cook until sausage is brown and slightly crispy – don’t stir too often or the sausage and rampicante won’t crisp up.  This is very much a “leave it alone, I have dishes to do and a toddler to wrangle while dinner cooks” kind of meal.

While these are cooking, boil water and start the pasta cooking – this goes nicely with any carb accompaniment, frankly, so cous cous, brown rice, barley, polenta, or anything else you fancy makes a fine substitute for noodles.

When the sausage is almost done, throw in the green parts of the beet greens – they cook fast, so now is the time to start stirring, adding a bit more olive oil if everything’s looking too dry.  When the greens wilt, toss the pasta in the pan and stir everything together (added benefit: if you mis-timed your carb cooking or are using up leftovers, here is where everything gets to be the same temperature, so feel free to use last night’s leftover Chinese food takeout rice straight from the fridge.)  If you’re watching your calories or using up leftovers, add a splash of water instead of the extra oil above – the hot pasta water is great for adding a little thickener.

Pour into serving bowl and add chunks/crumbled goat cheese on top – feel free to toss to distribute, but it will lessen the final appearance as the melted goat cheese deliciously though unattractively slimes every strand of pasta. 

Peel?  If it’s young or small or you buy it mid-summer, no.  If you’re buying in fall and it’s a big, old fruit, or if you just think it’s going to be too tough for your tastes, yes.  This squash serves both seasons of squash descriptors.
Edible seed? No.  Scoop them out and toss them.
Edible when raw? Yes, if it’s young, though I would probably only eat the neck of the squash raw since the bulb gets more winter squash-like, and I would shred, grate, or julienne – I’m not a huge fan of raw summer squash in the first place, and this variety is a bit tougher than some of his friends, so I don’t know that giant raw hunks of it would be the way to go.
Worth the price of organic? Questionable, but probably not.  Summer squash in general isn’t a horrible pesticide keeper, and winter squash is one of the least offensive conventional vegetables you can buy.  Rampicante is known among squash gardeners as being surprisingly resistant to many bugs that plague other squashes, so it means it probably isn’t getting sprayed down even as heavily as other squashes.  Since it’s so rare at the markets at this point anyway, I probably wouldn’t sweat it and would just buy whatever they have, especially if you plan on peeling.  If you’re going to eat it skin and all, you may want to take the monetary plunge, but I don’t bother with this guy, and I’m pretty picky about organic when I have the chance.
In season: Mid-late summer through Fall – Earlier in the season, treat like a summer squash; later in the season, peel and treat like a winter squash.
Best with: Garlic, basil, oregano; Italian cheeses (parmesan, ricotta, mozarella…); cinnamon and sage for savory soups; lemon or orange for splash of citrus; tomatoes and other complimentary summer vegetables like eggplant
How to Store: In the fridge when fresh, it should last a good week or longer.  Once cut, the pores begin to weep and it begins to dry out, so use it up within a couple of days at most.  You can wrap it in plastic or foil if you like; just don’t shove it into the fridge with the cut part exposed because it will leak sappy moisture onto your shelves or other food…Not that I’ve done that.  As winter squash, it can keep uncut in a cool place for as long as a couple of months, but it should be hard-skinned first.  If it’s still too young, it will just rot.

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Candy Cane Beets

30 Monday Jul 2012

Posted by in Fall, Purple, Red, Roots and Tubers, Spring, Summer, White, Winter

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Okay, so I know I waxed eloquent about Golden Beets only recently and complained about the earthy, bloody mess that is dark red beets, but how cute are these!

They look like something out of Willy Wonka or Candyland.  I want to skip through the Vegetable Forest, leaping between Chioggia stepping stones.

They’re called Chioggia or Candy Cane Beets, and they’re just like all the other beets except much, much prettier. Look at these stems!

I hope I can find some when Valentine’s Day comes around because I always end up serving tomato soup as the vegetable, and these are much more romantic looking. (Oooo!  I could cut them into heart shapes!  Alright, I’ve gone over the edge…  I’m not sure how a vegetable gets romantic in the first place…  I don’t think I want to know.)

Chioggias are more of a fuchsia or deep pink color on the outside than their bloody brethren, so if there are three kinds of beets lined up, golden will be orange-ish, traditional beets will be maroon colored, and these will be the paler red/hot pink kind you see in between.  (I only bought Chioggias and Golden, so no dark red beets in the picture to the left, just Golden for comparison.)

They also typically have candy cane stripes at the base of the greens where it meets the root, though they don’t have to:Once peeled, the resulting nugget can be almost all white like a potato, or deep pink stripes – the whiter ones will have paler or less pronounced pink stripes once you cut into the center; the deeper ones will make the really eye-catching slices.  The flavor isn’t as nutty as golden beets nor as earthy as red beets – frankly, they’re simply blander, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing.  They make the best chips, in my opinion, since non-beet eaters won’t be turned off by them.  As much as I love Golden Beets, they do have a distinct beet-ish flavor.  Candy Cane beets are milder and probably a better intro beet for those who really, really are afraid to try beets, though the more red they have (i.e. the more pronounced, eye-catching stripes) the more beet-like they will taste.  But, who cares?  Look how cute!

My biggest issue with Candy Cane beets is really an issue with my food processor.  I have a lovely slicing blade that should have made me beet chips in 5 seconds flat, but the beets are too round to go in properly.  The whole setup is designed for oblong things like sweet potatoes or zucchini.  Arrgh.  So in the meantime while I look on Amazon for a new lid, I had to handslice my beets to get them to look pretty, which is annoying because I have approximately Zero knife skills.  I can’t make even slices if my life depended on it.  (Which would be an odd way to threaten someone, I suppose: “Cut this beet right or I’ll kill you!”)

Regardless, toss with olive oil, salt and pepper, lay them in a single layer on a cookie sheet covered in foil, and roast at 400 or 450 until slightly crispy, about 20 minutes.  I like to flip mine halfway through so they crisp up on both sides, but if you’re not a good flipper (I am not), you don’t have to.  They’ll still taste good.  Unless you own a mandoline or some other device (like knife skills, perhaps) that will allow you to get uniform, very thin slices, they’re not going to get crisp like chips – they’ll crisp up on the edges, but the centers will remain slightly soft.  That’s okay.  Sprinkle with salt and munch away.

Note: The cuteness will fade as they cook – the colors become more muted, especially at the higher heat that also will give them brown crispy spots.  If you’re trying to impress someone, stick to the reddest slices you’ve got – the paler whiter ones will be brownish and unimpressive once roasted.

Info on peeling, seasonality, etc. is the same as Golden Beets.  Enjoy!

Heirloom Tomatoes

03 Tuesday Jul 2012

Posted by in Fruit, Green, Orange, Purple, Red, Summer, Vegetables, Yellow

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Okay, I overbought on the tomatoes.

But you can’t blame me.  It all started last summer…we overslept one Sunday and raced to the market to try and get there before everyone packed up, which I highly recommend, by the way, if you’re looking for deals.  No one wants to cart crates of perishables back to the farm, so everyone slashes their prices.  Pickings can be slim, but they’ll also be cheap.

Which is how we found ourselves with a GIANT box of heirloom tomatoes for $10.  It probably weighed 20 lbs, maybe more.  It was awesome.  We couldn’t figure out what to do with them – we ate caprese salads and avocado salads and made fresh tomato sauces and fresh tomato soup and ate them raw and sliced for breakfast.  We were so worried they’d go bad that we stuffed them into every meal and somehow managed to finish them off by Saturday.

So the next Sunday we went back for more.  Imagine our shock and chagrin when we casually asked, “Hey, could we get one of those boxes like last week?” and the guy said, “Sure, that’ll be $40.”  Um, what?  Um, no.

Except we couldn’t stop thinking about them.  It’s been almost a year and I can still taste the sweet juice that dribbled all over my hands when I transferred the wedges to a plate, the sharp tang of balsamic and the creamy counterbalance of fresh buffalo mozarella, the aroma of garlic and lemon bubbling in the sauce.  See, once you’ve had fresh tomatoes, and I mean really fresh, I mean ripened by the summer sun and then hours later popped into your mouth, you become very, very spoiled.  I can’t eat grocery store tomatoes anymore.  I can barely eat homegrown Romas or Beefsteaks or any of the other standard-variety-bred-for-toughness-and-shipping varieties.  They taste mealy and bland and chemical-y.  They taste like what I always thought tomatoes tasted like, which is why I swore I must be allergic to them and literally THREW UP when my mom made me eat one as a child.  (Did I mention I was an actress in an earlier life?  Majored in Theater?  A bit melodramatic?  Oh, I didn’t?  Ah.)

So we’ve been tomato-free in our home since last fall.  Oh, we’ve probably cheated once or twice, picked one up for a certain something and been so horribly disappointed we don’t even remember it, but our salads are just greens and dressing these days, twiddling our tomato thumbs and waiting impatiently for the heat that will bring the heirlooms back to market.

So when we went to the market 3 weeks ago and a handful of farmers had them for sale, it was Veggie Christmas [Except when you taste these, you realize why they’re botanically a fruit.  They’re so sweet, they’re practically dessert.  Seriously.  I drizzled fig balsamic vinegar on one and it was too sweet to eat with the meal.  We had to save it for after dinner and have it with tea.]  Determined not to make last year’s Giant Box mistake and overspend, we bought a modest 3 happy fellows and took them home – where we promptly devoured them in about 12 hours.

So this week, when we were a little later to market and one seller slashed their prices by only 50 cents, we dove in.  They’re WAY too expensive, they really are.  Typical prices are $4/lb, and I’m not even sure that’s for organic.  $3/lb is considered a bargain.  But they’re so delicious and unusual and beautiful and you can just put them on anything – you can slice firmer ones or dice ripe ones for bruschetta or mush soft ones into sauce.  They can go in cold things like sandwiches or accidentally get warm like when you dice one on top of an omelette, or get really purposefully hot in ratatouille or soup, and there they’ll still be, sweet and bright and just a wee bit sour.  The really good ones, the heirlooms, the weird varieties, don’t hold up well.  They barely travel well from market to house, much less farm to store, so even heirlooms at the grocery aren’t the same as the ones you can get from the farmer, or grow yourself.  Look for firm but not hard.  A little give is okay; anything soft will turn within a day so eat it immediately.  They do get mealy as they over-ripen, but toss it into a sauce with half a good one to save the flavor and you’ll never notice.  Heirlooms come in every color and size imaginable – from teeny tiny to the size of a shrunken head, round and oblong and lobed and flattish,  in orange and yellow and  red (of course) and striped and purple to almost black and even ones that are still pretty green when ripe, so experiment and see which kinds you like the best – though I did ask a farmer this week and was informed that even green tomatoes should get a yellowish tinge as they ripen.  If it’s still completely green, even with green stripes, it’s not ready.  I like the orangey-yellows, the purples, and the deep reds myself.  Not sure what their names are, but since I’ve only got a few months to eat them, I’m not wasting any more time trying to figure it out.

The best way to eat heirlooms?  Simply.  A drizzle of olive oil, a shake of sea salt, and dive in.  But if you need stuff to go with them, keep everything nice and raw to really let the sweetness shine:

Caprese Salad: alternate slices of tomato, fresh mozarella (the kind that comes in a tub with water – preferably buffalo if you want to splurge, but cow’s milk tastes just dandy, too), and fresh basil leaves.  Drizzle with good quality olive oil, balsamic vinegar, and sprinkle lightly with salt.

Avocado-Tomato Salad: Chop avocado and tomato wedges into similar-sized chunks.  Toss with garlic powder and a dash of salt.  If the tomato is slightly underripe, you may want to add a teeny amount of olive oil or lime juice to get a little juiciness going, but I usually don’t.

Bruschetta:  Dice tomato and as many cloves of garlic as you can stand and mix with olive oil, salt and pepper.  Use more oil than you think you need – it shouldn’t be swimming in it, but all the oil shouldn’t get soaked up by the tomato either.  Let sit for up to a few hours – the longer it sits, the more the garlic will infuse the oil and mellow out, but we often don’t let it sit more than the two minutes it takes to toast the bread.  Lightly toast really nice sliced bread – go artisan here; skip the sandwich bread.  Top the bread with the tomato mixture, spooning the remaining oil in the bowl on to the bare parts of the bread.

Slightly-healthier alternative to above bruschetta: skip the olive oil mix.  Spread good bread with ricotta and top with diced tomatoes, garlic powder, and a dash of salt.  Add sliced olives if you want a little kick.

I could seriously go on and on.  Feel free to post your favorites below!  I’m sure this topic is going to come up again.  A lot.

Peel?  No.  I don’t even peel if I’m making them into a sauce – the skin is thinner than grocery store tomatoes bred for shipping, and I don’t mind it.
Edible seed? Yes.  I don’t like a ton of seeds or my concoctions to be too acidic, so if some of the insides leak out on to the cutting board, I don’t mind; some people strain the seeds, especially in a sauce, for texture purposes, so feel free to strain if you like.
Edible when raw?  Heirlooms are best raw, in my opinion, unless you have a ton you need to use up – then go for a same day sauce, not one you’re going to jar and freeze.
Worth the price of organic?  Questionable.  Tomato leaves are poisonous to a lot of animals (humans included) so tomatoes can survive pretty well on their own, and are pretty low on the list for foods that absorb pesticides like the dickens – they used to be high, but recent efforts have lowered their residue.  On the other hand, you’re eating the whole thing, skin and all, so it might be a good idea.  The good news?  Heirlooms are still considered something of a specialty item, so most sellers are organic anyway.  Hence the high price.
In season: Summer.
Best with: Garlic, balsamic, lemon, any kind of cheese but soft cheeses really let the complex flavor of the heirloom shine, almost any savory herb (basil, rosemary, oregano are all classics), zucchini, eggplant
How to Store:  On the counter.  Do NOT refrigerate!  Tomatoes leach out their vitamins in the refrigerator and lose their flavor.  Don’t cut into a huge tomato if you’re only going to use half, if you can help it – find something to put it in or have a few extra slices than you intended.  Ripe tomatoes that aren’t yet soft will keep up to a week; if they’ve got a soft spot, you’ve only got about 2 days max, so use it or lose it.