Tart applesauce

I love fall. It is by far the best season and one of the reasons it is the best is because of all the delicious foods that come with it. It is the start of comfort food season. One of the healthiest comfort foods in my opinion is applesauce, especially warm apple sauce. Maybe with a scoop of ice cream on top but that would certainly make it less healthy. Anyway, I have a few applesauce recipes I use, but this one is a less sweet, more tart version that is good when you want to have this with a meal instead of as a dessert.

Ingredients:

4 granny smith apples, peel, cored, and diced
3/4 cup apple juice
1/4 cup water
1 teaspoon fresh lemon zest
1/2 a small lemon, juiced
1/8 teaspoon salt

Directions:

Place apples, apple juice, water, and zest in a heavy bottomed sauce pan. Cook on medium-high heat and bring to a slow boil. Boil for 20-25 minutes, stirring occasionally, until the apples are soft enough to be easily mashed. Mash with a potato masher, turn heat down to low, season with salt and continue to cook until it is the thickness you want. I usually cook mine for 5 or so minutes. Turn off heat, stir in lemon juice and serve.

Basil pesto pasta

One of the best parts of having my own (small) garden is that I have fresh herbs on hand all summer and into the fall. Fresh herbs, and particularly basil for some reason, are really expensive at the store but can be grown easily, even indoors. Unless you're me. Then it is absolutely impossible to keep an indoor plant alive. One person commented that my house looked like a plant graveyard and a coworker just recently removed the plants from my office to try to revive them. Anyway, outdoor herbs are easy and if you have a bumper crop of basil then pesto should be an obvious next step. The recipe below makes enough pesto to cover two pretty hearty servings of pasta, but you could easily just use this as a sauce and spread it on a grilled cheese or on crostini with goat cheese.

Ingredients:

1 cup basil leaves, loosely packed

1 small clove of garlic, minced

2 tablespoons pine nuts

1/2 a lemon, juiced

1/4 cup parmesan, grated (not the stuff in the can) plus more for the top

olive oil, a few good sized glugs

2 servings of spaghetti, with some of the cooking water reserved

8-10 cherry tomatoes, cut in half

Directions:

Heat a dry skillet over medium heat, when it is warm add the pine nuts and keep shaking the pan until the nuts are golden brown, which should only take about 3 minutes. Transfer the pine nuts to a food processor, add the minced garlic and a small glug of olive oil and pulse a few times to break things down. Add the basil to the nuts and garlic and pulse a few more times. Add the lemon juice and process for about 30 seconds. While the food processor is running, stream a good sized glug of olive oil (maybe like 1/4 cup) into the mixture. Continue to process until a loose paste forms. Mix in the cheese and process a few more times, if it looks dry add a little more oil. The goal is to get the pesto to be bright green and sort of creamy, but not oily and runny. In a medium sauce pan, boil water for your pasta and salt it well - someone once said it should taste like the ocean in order to properly season pasta. Boil your pasta, but when it is done cooking take about 1/3 cup of the cooking water out before you drain it. Drain pasta and transfer it to a large bowl (or back in the pan but don't return it to the heat). Add your pesto and mix well, adding some of the cooking liquid back in as you're stirring to loosen up the sauce and coat the pasta. Stir in cherry tomatoes and grate more parmesan on top.

*If you want to save the pesto you have two options: freeze it or refrigerate it. If you freeze it then don't add the cheese, mix that in the day that you're serving it. If you refrigerate it you can make the whole thing but then coat the top with a nice layer of olive oil to prevent it from browning. If it browns it still tastes fine, it just looks nasty.

Polenta fries

To say that I'm obsessed with Grizzly Peak's polenta fries would be an understatement. They are so freaking amazing. They are crispy on the outside, creamy on the inside, and served with this incredible homemade ketchup. I've called the restaurant and asked for the ketchup recipe but they wouldn't share it, which is actually unusual, most places are happy to provide their recipes. I don't blame Grizzly Peak though, if I found out how to make it at home I'd be much less inclined to spend $9 on polenta and ketchup. Even though the ketchup recipe is a mystery, the polenta part is actually super easy (and cheap!) to make. I used instant polenta because I'm a quitter and don't want to spend 30-40 minutes whisking over a hot stove.

Ingredients:

3/4 cup instant polenta
2 1/4 cup water*
salt to season the water (next time I may try veggie stock)
1 teaspoon garlic powder (if I were really fancy I'd use chopped roasted garlic)
1/3 cup parmesan cheese
1/2 teaspoon Italian seasoning OR rosemary (adjust to your tastes)
cooking spray

Directions:

Boil salted water in a sauce pan and slowly stir in polenta. Cook according to package directions, mine cooked in only 3 minutes. Remove from heat and stir in garlic, parmesan, and your herbs. Transfer this to a pan that you've sprayed with cooking spray (I used a pyrex that measured maybe like 8"x6"). Take a wet spatula and evenly spread polenta in pan, trying to smooth it as much as possible. Place it in the fridge until it is firmly set and cool. Invert it onto a cutting board and slice into thick fries, they could really be any size you want. Arrange them onto a baking sheet and spray with cooking spray. Place them under the broiler until they are brown and crispy on the outside, turning as necessary to crisp all sides. Broilers all have different strengths, so the cooking time will vary wildly. Just keep an eye on them. Mine took about 15 minutes from start to finish and the bottoms browned before the tops so I turned them so that all the sides had a chance to crisp up.

*The amount of water you'll need to use will depend on the type of polenta you pick up, just follow the directions on the box. You can also season these any way you like, I didn't want mine to be too herby so I just lightly seasoned them.

Wine braised mushrooms

When I was growing up I was obsessed with this restaurant called Spaghetti's. Honestly, at this point I have no idea if the food was actually any good or not but their chianti mushrooms still haunt my dreams with deliciousness. Also, 13-year-old me thought I was super cool and classy for ordering (and actually enjoying) something with chianti in the title. The recipe here is my attempt at recreating that appetizer, which was really just a big pile of mushrooms served with some bread to soak up the braising liquid. I will often eat them like this for an appetizer. If you're looking to make them into a meal I'd recommend serving them on top of soft polenta or throwing cooked spaghetti into the pot after removing them from the oven and tossing it with some shaved parmesan.

Ingredients:

1 box (a pound?) of button mushrooms
1 tablespoon unsalted butter
1 clove garlic, minced
1/3 cup red wine (use what you'd drink)
1 teaspoon soy sauce
1 teaspoon balsamic vinegar
2 tablespoons water

Directions:

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees. Clean your mushrooms by wiping them with a dry paper towel and cutting the stems down just a little bit. In a pot that can transfer from stove to oven (I use my enameled cast iron dutch oven for this) melt butter over medium low heat. Once butter is melted, place mushrooms cap side down in pan and do not move. Let them cook there without moving until the butter starts to turn golden brown, probably like 2-3 minutes. Turn the mushrooms over and cook for an additional 2-3 minutes. You want to cook them for 5 minutes total. After 5 minutes turn off the burner, add garlic, wine, soy, and vinegar and stir to release the good brown bits from the bottom of the pan. Add water, cover, and bake for 30 minutes. Remove from oven and serve. If you want more sauce just remove the mushrooms from the pan and add more water, scraping down the sides and bottom of the pot to release more sauce and stirring to combine.

Date energy balls

When I first made these and was talking to my housemate about them she thought that I called them "date energy balls" so that I would have something to snack on that would give me the energy to go on a date, which is definitely true; these would give you great pre-date energy and would hold off your hunger for a while too! But really they are just made using dates. These will really kick your hunger and they are a great after-work but before dinner snack or a pre-gym snack.

Ingredients:

1/2 cup pitted whole dates (not the chopped kind that are rolled in flour)

1/2 cup walnuts

1/2 cup any other dried fruit (including more dates) that you like

1/2 cup any other nut that you like (including more walnuts)

1 cup quick oats

2 tablespoons flax seeds

1/4 cup dried coconut (if you like it, see note below)

1/2 teaspoon vanilla

Directions:

Throw the nuts in a food processor and roughly chop them. Then add the dried fruit and blend until the fruit starts to break down. Add the oats, flax seeds, coconut (if using)*, and vanilla. Process until it becomes a dough. If it is dry and not turning into a dough, add a little water and try again. Wet your hands and take a small amount (like a good, rounded spoonful) and form it into a ball. Form all of it into balls and then toss in the freezer. You can eat them frozen or thaw them, either way they are delicious!

*You can really flavor these any way you want. You could add cinnamon, or cocoa powder, or actual chocolate, or really anything you want to flavor it up. I just don't really like cinnamon or chocolate so I didn't add it.

Tomato basil crostini

This year my garden was hit hard. Out of all the things I planted, the only things I'll be harvesting are tomatoes and basil (and a few chives, thankfully!). Despite my initial frustration with the bunny (or asshole human) that destroyed most of my plants, I'm very happy that my favorite things are still going strong. This is just one of many things to make with cherry tomatoes and basil. Obviously increase the amounts to make as many as you feel like you can eat.

Ingredients:

3 slices of baguette or french bread
1 garlic clove, cut in half
6 cherry tomatoes, cut in half
4-6 leaves of fresh basil, cut in ribbons
reduced balsamic vinegar*
salt

Directions:

Toast bread slices. Remove from toaster and rub the garlic clove, cut side down, over crisped bread. Top with tomatoes and basil. Drizzle balsamic syrup over tomatoes and season with salt.

*To reduce balsamic vinegar, just place regular balsamic vinegar in a sauce pan and simmer until it has reduced by half. When it is done it will be thick and syrupy and should be able to coat a spoon.

Cucumber salad

This salad is the perfect side dish for summer. It is crunchy, light, and slightly sweet. The best cucumbers for this salad are the long skinny ones that are wrapped in plastic at the store. The reason they're so good for this is because they don't have big seeds like the other cucumbers. If you use regular cucumbers just scoop out all the seeds before you slice them.

Ingredients:

1 English cucumber
1/4 of a small red onion
1 garlic clove
1/4 cup rice vinegar or white wine vinegar
1/4 cup water
1 rounded tablespoon sugar
1/8 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon dill weed

Directions:

Slice the cucumbers and red onion as thinly as humanly possible and throw them into a non-reactive (not metal) bowl. Smash a garlic clove but don't chop it at all (you want it to be big enough to pick out later). Throw that into the bowl too. Add the vinegar, water, sugar, salt, and dill and mix it well to combine everything. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and refrigerate overnight if possible, but at least for a couple hours. Honestly, it is edible right away but it gets better once the cucumbers start to soften and soak up all the other flavors. Just pick out the garlic clove before you eat it. After it has soaked overnight you may also want to drain some of the liquid off too.

Tomatillo salsa

Tomatillos are these really weird looking fruits (veggies?) that grow with this papery stuff covering the outside. They taste like a cross between a green tomato (which is an entirely different thing) and a lemon, and they have the texture of a cross between an unripe tomato and an apple. Growing up, we planted them in our backyard and I didn't realize until moving away that they would be sort of challenging to find. Luckily my grocery store usually has a small amount of fresh tomatillos available and they almost always have canned. I've made this salsa with both fresh and canned before, both of which resulted in really tasty salsa, but I definitely prefer the fresh.

Ingredients:

1 clove garlic

1/4 small red onion, chopped

1 small (or 1/2 a large) jalapeno, or more if you want it spicier

6-8 fresh tomatillos (or 1 can, drained)

1 small lemon, juiced

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 good handful of cilantro

Directions:

Mince your garlic really finely, then sprinkle it with salt and smash/drag it across your cutting board a bunch of times with the back of your knife until it makes a paste. Throw this in the food processor. Chop your onion and your jalapeno and add those to the food processor too. Turn it on a few times so that your pieces become even smaller. Rinse your tomatillos to remove any of the sticky coating and then quarter them. Add the tomatillos, lemon juice, and salt to the food processor. Pulse a few times to break things down, then turn it on and let it run continuously for a while until things are really starting to come together. Turn it off, throw in your cilantro, pulse a few more times, then turn it on again and let it run until it is the consistency you like. I like mine on the smoother side, so I let it go for a while. It tastes best immediately, but it can stay in the refrigerator for 3-4 days. I just  give it a good stir if it has been sitting for more than a day.