The September 2011 issue of Food & Wine magazine arrived at our doorstep this week and it has a great spread on the 'Art of Summer Cooking.' Many of the recipes sound interesting and delicious, and use produce that is at it's peak right now. The recipes are all nicely organized in the back of the magazine to be contained wholly on one page with picture included, which is a layout I would like to see more of in monthly food publications as it's so much more user friendly than having to flip back and forth when one half the recipe is on page 57 and the other is continued on page 163. I have a few of the recipes dogeared, but the first one Nick and I tried was 'Grilled Squash Ribbons and Prosciutto with Mint Dressing.' It was terrific and quite flavorful.
I used a grill pan rather than outdoor grill, as these are pretty delicate. Our mandoline got to see some action in order to get the slices of summer squash as thin as possible. The lime and mint dressing really makes the dish pop, and I got to use homegrown mint and garlic. No homegrown zucchini though. I think some kind of insect has bored into my zucchini stems and perhaps ruined them completely. That is a typical result for my gardening attempts, so I was pleased as punch that my garlic made it.
Three whole heads of garlic survived my decidedly amateur attempt at cultivation. That's a 100% success rate as I planted three cloves in the ground last fall. They triumphed over a miserably cold and wet spring, a dreadfully hot and humid summer, and several attempts to be eaten by backyard rabbits. I did learn after speaking with a very helpful woman at a farmers' market this summer, that I should have cut off the scapes to allow more energy to go into producing the bulb. Oh well, now I know what to do next year. Since this little experiment worked out so well I am planning on planting a lot more garlic this fall.
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