Black-Eyed Peas with Turmeric and Pomegranates

The tricky cold August weather pulled quite a fast one on me. Here I was, thinking I had more time with summer, when we passed the halfway threshold in the last month of "vacation." Where did it all go?

As if summer's abrupt end weren't enough, the holidays arrive early this year. We'll be out on a boat on Labor Day, enjoying the breeze and (hopefully) some last summer heat, and the very next day, we'll be in synagogue.

This one awesome time notwithstanding, I tend to plan my holiday menus at the 11th hour. The couple of days before Rosh Hashanah are a frenzied blur of grocery store lines, written and rewritten shopping lists, dirty dishes, and -- okay -- amazing, amazing smells wafting from the kitchen. But this year, I'm trying a more proactive approach. So for the next couple of weeks, I'll share some recipes that celebrate the end of summer and the beginning of fall. I hope they'll find a home on your table, whether you're celebrating the New Year or just the turning of the seasons.

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I've got a few dinner ideas up my sleeve, but if you'll humor me, this year, I'm starting with lunch.

With the holidays starting in early September, we're counting on nice weather and are planning to have a picnic one afternoon. Black-eyed peas are perfect picnic food, since you can cook them in advance and keep them in the fridge for a few days without a problem. They're happy chilled or at room temperature, and they play well with a huge range of flavors. They also happen to be an auspicious food for the Jewish new year, associated with prosperity and luck in the coming year.

One of my favorite dishs involving black-eyed peas comes from Naomi Duguid’s excellent book Burma. I blogged about it last year, and since then, I haven't been able to get enough of the addictive combination of turmeric, shallots, ginger, and fish sauce. I highly recommend trying it. (You can substitute a bit of soy sauce for the fish sauce, if that's not something you keep stocked.)

I built on that original recipe in honor of Rosh Hashanah, adding another auspicious food – pomegranate seeds – and some pomegranate syrup, for good measure. I swapped out fish sauce for soy sauce, added a heaping handful of parsley, and finished the dish with a big squeeze of fresh lime.

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If a nice, big head-start is a third auspicious sign of things to come, we're in good shape.

And hey: whether or not you're celebrating, this would make a mighty fine lunch for a weekend in the park. Just sayin'.

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More Rosh Hashana ideas: This long list of options, this awesome apples and honey cake, and my first high holiday menu post from 2009.

Black-Eyed Peas with Turmeric and Pomegranate

Inspired by a recipe from Naomi Duguid’s Burma

Serves 4 as a side dish or a component of a meal

1 heaping cup black-eyed peas 2 tablespoons olive oil 1 teaspoon fresh grated turmeric root or ¼ teaspoon ground turmeric 1 large shallot, minced ¾ teaspoon salt 1 teaspoon soy sauce Seeds from 1 pomegranate (about ¾ cup) 2 teaspoon pomegranate syrup, optional (if not using, double lime juice) 2-3 tablespoons chopped parsley, chives, or a mixture Juice of ½ a lime

If your black-eyed peas are old, soak them overnight in enough water to cover them by at least 1 inch.

When ready to cook the peas, fill a medium pot with water and bring to a boil. Add drained peas, cover the pot, reduce the heat to low, and simmer until peas are fork-tender, between 45 minutes and 1.5 hours. Cooking time varies drastically and depends on the age of your peas, so check them regularly. You want them soft, but not burst. As you can see in the photos above, I overdid mine a bit; the times listed here help ensure that you won't.

Meanwhile, heat the olive oil in your smallest sauté pan over medium-high heat. Add the turmeric and shallots, and cook for 3-4 minutes, until shallots are soft, fragrant, and browned in spots. Add salt, stir to combine, and remove from the heat.

When peas are soft but still retaining their shape, drain them, transfer them to a bowl, and pour the shallot mixture over the peas, making sure to scrape the sauté pan for all those little bits of turmeric and shallot clinging to the bottom. Stir beans to incorporate, taking care not to smush them too much.

Add soy sauce and pomegranate syrup if using, and toss to combine.

Right before serving, fold in pomegranate seeds, fresh herbs, and lime juice. Serve at room temperature or slightly chilled.

Single-Crust Plum Pie

I'm here to put a stake in the ground: bottom crust is not necessary. Buried under a pile of juicy summer fruit, it's only a matter of time before the crust succumbs to its inevitable, soggy fate. Purists will tell you that a pie without a bottom crust is not a pie at all, and they will soldier on, pre-baking the thing, brushing it with egg, saying a special prayer before they fill it with juice. I've done that a lot, and I'm sure I'll do it again. (Apple pie season is around the corner, gulp.) But for now, I just turn to Nigel Slater, the wonderful British food writer and cookbook author, who says with an air of authoritativeness and nonchalance that we should skip the bottom crust entirely.

That's right: one crust, laid flat over summer's juiciest, sweetest plums. It's a genius recipe, really, because it takes all the anxiety out of making such a pie. You know, that thing where you par-bake the bottom crust and it shrinks away from the sides of your pan, banishing all hopes for an elegantly-shaped pie. Or that other thing where you take your pie out of the oven and anxiously count the minutes before people are eating it, for fear that if they take too long on their main course, they'll definitely be eating mush for dessert. One-crust pies do away with those things.

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As soon as you embark on making a pie that's just got a top crust, you really can make that crust however you see fit. Nigel Slater adds an egg to his crust, nudging its texture ever so slightly toward cake. The result is billowy and light, still short like pie crust but less prone to tearing or crumbling. Its as unfussy as all summer recipes should be.

The recipe comes from Ripe, Slater's homage to his fruit patch and the authoritative guide to using your summer produce. Ripe is organized by fruit, with dedicated chapters helping you work your way through damsons, elderberries (what, you don't have elderberries? For shame!) and all the usual suspects, too. He offers both savory and sweet ideas in each chapter, and I've already got several other recipes flagged for immediate attention. (Can you say blackberry semifreddo?) But this weekend, I made pie.

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The pie calls for quartered plums, but it also calls for the juiciest plums you can find. In my case, those plums were too juicy to be quartered. I cut into them with a paring knife, then snipped off chunks until most of what remained was pit. I then supplemented with nectarines, because I didn't have quite enough plums to swing a full pie. Many of my plums became mush, but so be it: August plum-cutting isn't a precise science. Fret not: your juiciest, least-cooperative plums have found their delicious destiny.

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Single-Crust Plum PieAdapted slightly from Nigel Slater's Ripe

 7 tablespoons butter 1/2 cup sugar 1 egg, lightly beaten 1 1/3 cups all-purpose flour 1/2 teaspoon baking powder 1/4 teaspoon coarse or flaky salt a bit of milk, for brushing crust 

2 pounds ripe, juicy plums (or a mix of plums and peaches/nectarines) 2 tablespoons sugar 1/8 teaspoon cinnamon (though I substituted galangal, and if you have that lying around, the combination is wonderful)

Cream the butter and sugar in a stand mixer or with an electric beater until light and fluffy, about 1 minute.

Mix in the lightly beaten egg, then gently add the flour and baking powder and mix on low speed until no streaks of flour remain. Remove dough from the mixing bowl and roll into a ball on a heavily floured work surface. Wrap in wax or parchment paper and refrigerate for about 20 minutes.

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.

Cut the ripe plums in half and remove their stones. Cut the fruit into whatever large pieces you can manage, then toss with the sugar and cinnamon and put into a lightly buttered pie dish.

Roll out the pastry on a floured board into a disk about 1 inch wider than the width of your pie dish, then fold in half or drape over the rolling pin and lift carefully on to the pie. There will be a little left over, and there may be a few cracks. No problem: The crust is very short, so tears are okay. If they stress you out, go ahead and patch them up. Some of the juice will probably erupt through the crust as it cooks, so we're not aiming for perfection here.

Brush the pastry lightly with milk and bake for 40-50 minutes. The pastry should be pale-biscuit coloured. Dust with sugar and serve warm with vanilla ice cream.

Cumin-Rubbed Lamb Chops with Dates

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I've wanted to write about lamb for the longest time. Though we don't eat much meat around here, lamb is one of my favorites, and several months ago, I treated us to a big package of individually-wrapped grassfed lamb chops. Made two, tucked the rest in the freezer for a special occasion.

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Then Friday night rolled around, and we found ourselves with no dinner plans and a fantastic bottle of pinot in need of drinking. It's been a tough month for us, but now it's not July anymore. It's August, we have (less than!) one month left of summer, and I want to drink it from the fire hose, make it last. Who needs a special occasion? Lamb is the special occasion.

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We uncorked the pinot around 6. Why wait for dinner to get our weekend started? We sipped as I cooked. D set the table for two. While the spice-rubbed lamb sizzled under the broiler, I cut up a couple nice tomatoes, sliced them into wedges, and dressed them simply with olive oil, maldon salt, and chives. Some green beans went into a big skillet with a bit of diced shallot and some hazelnut picada leftover from a cooking experiment. And then there was the sauce, an effortless mix of beer and dates that reduced to a glaze, the dates sticky and soft, that we used to finish the lamb. I pulled a leftover challah from the freezer, tossed it in the oven, and when it was nice and hot, we sat down to a simple, delicious summer dinner.

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If you've got the funds, this is a great dish to make for company. Plan for about 2 chops per person. While it's still warm out, serve with a nice salad and some fresh green or shelling beans. But this dish can carry you right into fall. I'm already looking forward to serving it with mashed sweet potatoes over the holidays. Is it too early to talk about the end of summer? Probably. So pretend I never said anything, and serve these up on the porch, basking in the summer light. Happy August, friends.

Cumin-Rubbed Lamb Chops with DatesInspired by this recipe from Gourmet Live Serves 2

4 individual lamb rib chops 1 teaspoon ground cumin 1 teaspoon ground coriander 4 cloves, ground (or 1/4 teaspoon ground cloves) 1 1/2 teaspoons kosher salt

1 cup pale or amber beer 1 tablespoon date syrup or brown sugar 8 dates, halved lengthwise and pitted 1/2 teaspoon kosher salt

For the lamb chops: Preheat the broiler.  Combine cumin, coriander, cloves, and salt in a small bowl. Place chops on a rimmed baking sheet lined with tin foil, and liberally sprinkle both sides of each chop with the spice mix. Transfer chops to the oven and broil for 3-4 minutes on each side; 3 minutes for medium-rare, 4 minutes for medium. They should emerge sizzling.

Meanwhile, make the sauce: Pour the beer into a wide saucepan set over medium heat. Add date syrup or brown sugar and salt. Bring to a boil and cook about 3 minutes. Then add dates in a single layer. Cook the sauce for 3-4 more minutes, watching it carefully to ensure that it doesn't burn. This will depend on the size of your flame, so really do watch it carefully; beer evaporates pretty quickly. By the time the beer has reduced to a glaze, the dates will be soft and sticky. Turn off the heat.

When lamb chops are finished, remove the chops to a plate and pour the accumulated lamb juices into the pan with the glaze. In my case, the chops finished almost exactly when the glaze finished, so I added the juices and cooked the mixture for a couple more minutes, to thicken it a bit. If you like a thinner sauce, no need to continue the cooking. Either way, once you've added the juices, taste the sauce and adjust salt and/or sweetness as necessary. If the mixture is too salty, add a tablespoon or two of water.

To serve: Plate the lamb chops, 2 per person. Drizzle the glaze overtop, and divide dates between the two plates. Serve immediately.

Tips: If the glaze reduces too quickly and the chops aren't ready, add a tablespoon of water to the glaze to give it some more time. If the chops finish too quickly, set them on a plate and tent with foil to keep warm. The chops can also be reheated in a very low (200-degree) oven for 5 minutes prior to serving.

Peach-Tomato Salad, a few ways

An unlikely pairing, these two. Tomatoes and peaches, when at their prime, are both so juicy and flavorful that you need something crusty to soak up all those juices. Peaches get tucked under biscuit dough and baked up into cobbler. In this house, tomatoes have no finer place than atop a slice of toasted garlic-rubbed sourdough bread, drizzled with olive oil and sprinkled with flaky salt. These are noble dishes. They make intuitive sense.

But rules are meant to be broken, especially in summertime, and this is the salad to do it. It is a big, summery bowl full of juice, and there's nothing to sop it up. (Spoiler alert: serve with crusty bread.) But the juice that gathers at the bottom of the salad bowl is the purest extraction of summer. It is elixir, and you will want to hoard it, and spoon it up, and drink it straight.

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Without excellent peaches and tomatoes, this salad isn't worth making. Splurge at the farmers' market. Or, if your local famers' carry discounted "second" fruit with blemishes, this is a great place to use them. Once they're cut and macerated, you won't notice little imperfections in the fruit.

Let's talk about variations:

• Add a big handful of arugula or watercress and a couple chunks of feta cheese
• Toast 1/4 cup of almonds (or slivered almonds) and add them with a pinch of dried red chile
• Add a teaspoon of pomegranate syrup and a pinch or two of sumac
• My personal favorite: add chunks of avocado and a handful of homemade croutons

If you've got other ideas, don't hold back.

As far as how to serve this salad, other than gobble it plain, a big crusty piece of

bread

- I prefer toasted - is good for sopping up juices. You could also cut the fruit up smaller, add a chopped jalapeno and the juice of a lime, and you've got a beautiful

salsa fresca

that would be great served on any grilled white fish or on fish

tacos

. Boom.

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Or, if you literally want to drink your salad, you can make it, and then puree it into a fantastic sweet-tart gazpacho. Chile and lime optional.

Drink up, friends. Enjoy the weekend.

Peach-Tomato Salad serves 2

2 ripe, juicy peaches 2 plump, red beefsteak tomatoes 2 tablespoons good, fruity olive oil 1/2 teaspoon flaky salt freshly ground pepper to taste

Peel the peach using a peeler or a paring knife. Split in half down the dimpled pole of the peach, and pry the two half moons away from the pit. Cut each half into 4 slices, and then cut each slice in half. Transfer to a bowl with all the accumulated juices.

Cut the tomato into similar segments: cut in half, cut each half into 4 slices, and halve each slice. Transfer to the same bowl with juices.

Drizzle the olive oil over the fruit. Add some of the salt, and use a spoon to fold everything together without bruising the fruit too much. Taste, and add more salt and fresh pepper to taste. At this point, the salad is ready. It can rest happily on the counter until you're ready to eat, or you can gobble it all down immediately.

Peach-Tomato Salsa serves 4

2 ripe peaches 2 ripe tomatoes juice of half a lime half a jalapeno or serrano chile salt and pepper to taste

Peel peaches. Cut into full slices, cut each slice into strips, and cut each strip into cubes. Size is your choice - I like itsy bitsy pieces for chips, but chunky hunks for tacos.

Repeat with tomatoes, cutting into similarly sized pieces as the peaches. Dice the chile as small as you can.

Combine everything but salt and pepper in a bowl. Add salt and pepper gradually, tasting as you go, until your salsa is balanced to your taste. Serve immediately, or let the juices accumulate for a while.