There are few things more satisfying on a cold winter’s evening than sitting down to a meal brought about by your own craft and ingenuity. When a morning spent tracking rabbits across the snowed-in woodlands yields a young hare to serve as the centerpiece to a meal, garnished by shallots from the root cellar, carefully laid aside in summer’s waning, and sour cornichons from the crock, with fresh-baked bread, sliced, toasted and topped with leeks from that same cellar, bacon curing since the fall’s slaughter and cream milked out in the barn at the crack of dawn, this is the stuff of foodie dreams, culinary transcendence.

Returning to reality, though, I would most likely have missed the rabbit (and not for lack of firing, many, many times), my leeks and shallots would be dried up — along with the cow — the cornichons would be used up or spoiled, and poor little Tom Junior would have died of cholera. I have no illusions about my ability to survive in more rustic conditions. Luckily, rather than being dependent on my instincts and wits for survival, I can avail myself of the conveniences of the modern city. Instead of hours spent trying to outsmart small furry animals, a leisurely bike ride to Clancey’s is all I need to obtain a rabbit, conveniently skinned, eviscerated and frozen — as well as some awesomely gelatinous beef stock. And while our urban living situation has forced Martha and me into quarters too small to house a root cellar with sand-filled barrels of leeks and shallots, the co-op keeps a good supply these and other allia going pretty much year-round. As much as I like to romanticize the food and eating styles of the past, I’m grateful for the modern food system. (Thanks Monsanto!)

But even if modern life doesn’t demand a strictly local and seasonal diet, we shouldn’t overlook recipes developed with a place and time in mind before such considerations were optional. There is something perfect about a steaming pot of heavy stew on a winter’s night when the snow is falling in fat flakes and the fact that I can buy asparagus in February isn’t going to change that.

The dishes that follow both come from Madeleine Kamman’s When French Women Cook, specifically the chapter devoted to Marie-Charlotte. Raised in Poitou, France and later located in Paris around the turn of the last century, for Marie-Charlotte seasonal and local were realities rather than trends. These two recipes are satisfying ways to use up the remnants of the winter larder, but are equally satisfying when the only foresight required is a trip to the grocery store in advance of a big snowstorm.

Lapin aux Echalotes at aux Cornichons

I have only prepared and/or eaten rabbit a few times in my  life, and this recipe produced the best tasting one yet. I thought the use of pickles to the stew odd but their sourness combined in a familiar and delicious way with the sweetness of long-roasted shallots. For having such a short ingredient list, this produces a very flavorful stew.

On cutting up rabbits: The recipe as printed simply called for a young rabbit, but the first time it is referred to the instructions they are called “rabbit pieces”. If your rabbit came whole like mine did, here’s how I cut mine up: remove the hind legs and the forelegs. Slice off the flaps of belly meat from either side. Cut tight along the backbone to remove the loins from both sides of the rabbit. There may be a couple of tenderloins floating in the cavity — cut them out. Reserve the ribcage and backbone for stock (I just throw it in with my chicken carcasses). To promote even cooking, tie the tapered end of the loins back over the loin to produce an even cylinder. Roll the belly meat around a piece of tenderloin each and tie into an even bundle.

• 4 T butter
• 2 dozen large shallots, peeled
• 1 young rabbit (I didn’t ask mine’s age)
• Salt and pepper
• 1–1 ½ cups brown veal stock (I used the excellent beef stock from Clancey’s)
• 6 small sour pickles, sliced.

Heat the oven to 325ºF. Heat the butter in a large, straight-sided pan. Sauté the shallots until just beginning to brown. Season with salt and pepper. While you’ve got the salt and pepper handy, season the rabbit pieces and stir in with the shallots. Allow to brown a few minutes and then transfer the pan, covered, into the oven. Bake 40 minutes, basting at regular intervals with the juices that will accumulate in the pot. (I basted every ten minutes.) Raise the oven temperature to 400ºF, remove the pan and cover and stir in the pickle slices and the stock. Return to oven, uncovered, and bake an additional 20-30 minutes until the rabbit pieces are well browned on one side (do not stir after uncovering) and the sauce is reduced to a glaze.

Roties aux Blanc de Poireaux

Garlic toast topped with a mixture of leeks, bacon, cream and goat cheese — probably not something you should eat every day, but after trying it you might be tempted.

• 3 T butter
• 1 large leek
• Salt and pepper
• 3 oz bacon
• 1 cup cream
• 1 oz goat cheese
• 6 slices french country bread
• 1 clove of garlic
• Parsley, chopped

Melt the butter in a large skillet, add the leeks and cook over low heat, covered, until the leeks are quite soft and reduced. Season with salt and pepper.

Meanwhile, chop the bacon into a rough ¼” dice and cook in a small skillet until crisp and most of the fat is rendered out. Drain the fat and reserve for another use and add the bacon to the leeks.

Add cream to bacon-leek mixture and allow to cook on medium low heat, uncovered, until cream is much reduced. Stir in goat cheese to melt. Cover and keep warm.

Toast the slices of bread and rub each with the garlic clove. Top each slice with a healthy spoonful of leek-bacon-cream-goat cheese mixture and sprinkle with parsley. Serve hot.

Eighty degree weather notwithstanding, I can’t shake the feeling that summer is soon to end and that a short fall will in no time at all be heralding in dark, cold winter. But as far as the farmers’ market is concerned, these fears are unfounded: fall might be around the corner, but there is still an abundance of ripe summer produce. In fact, with eggplants and summer squash, tomatoes, onions, red peppers and herbs all in season now is the time for ratatouille, the Provençal vegetable stew.

When I am looking to make French food, I always turn first to Elizabeth David’s French Provincial Cooking (I am inordinately proud of my first American edition—thanks Mom and Dad), a shining example among the many books that treat the subject of French cooking. On ratatouille, David says:

There are any amounts of versions of this dish, the variations being mainly in the proportions of each vegetable employed, the vegetables themselves being nearly always the same ones: aubergines, sweet peppers, onions, tomatoes, with courgettes sometimes being added and occasionally potatoes as well. Some people add mushrooms, but this is a rather pointless addition because they get completely lost in the mass of other vegetables. Garlic is optional, but the cooking medium must be olive oil.

To make a dish of ratatouille sufficient for about eight people, the ingredients are 3 medium-sized onions, 3 large aubergines, 3 large sweet red peppers, 3 courgettes [zucchini], 4 large tomatoes, 2 cloves of garlic, a few coriander seeds, fresh or dried basil if available, or parsley, 2 coffee-cups (after-dinner size) of olive oil. (242)

The first thing was to deal with the eggplant (ahem, aubergine) and summer squash, specifically with their overabundance of moisture. To get rid of some of their extra liquid, I sliced 3 long, spindly japanese eggplant and 4 thin, bright-yellow summer squashes into 1/4″ rounds on the mandoline (easily my favorite new kitchen tool this year). I then tossed them with a teaspoon of salt and spread everything out on a cooling rack set over a sheet pan to drain (you can also use a colander, but I feel spreading the vegetables out over a cooling rack helps them to drain more effectively). After an hour, I pressed the vegetable slices firmly with an absorbent towel to push out as much moisture as possible. A soggy ratatouille won’t do!

With the eggplant and squash prepped, I was ready to start cooking. I first sautéed three sliced onions in a generous amount of olive oil (not quite as generous as two teacupfuls, after-dinner or otherwise) until the onions were soft but not browned. To this I added the eggplant, squash and 3 finely chopped bell peppers. I cooked this mixture covered over medium-low heat for 40 minutes.

While the eggplant, squash, peppers and onions were stewing away I peeled and seeded 10 roma tomatoes (I had heirlooms from the market but it seemed a shame to cook them) and chopped them fine. Per Elizabeth David’s suggestion I also ground up a few coriander seeds and added them to the tomatoes. After the prescribed 40 minutes of cooking, I added the tomatoes and coriander to the pot with the eggplant, squash, onions and peppers and let it cook, mostly covered, for another 20 minutes while the tomatoes softened.

After the hour of cooking, I used a spoon to try the broth that had developed. What an amazing taste of late summer! The broth was rich, earthy and even very sweet. The vegetables really required no additional seasoning, but I added a little salt to brighten the flavor even more.

Just before serving, I mixed in 1/3 cup of basil chiffonade and 1/4 c of minced parsley. I only just realized that David suggests using one or the other, but really, who could choose?

One essential accompaniment for eating ratatouille is plenty of crusty bread to use to mop up all the juices. Given the farmers’ market theme of this lunch my dining companions and I were happy to indulge in a delicious and culturally appropriate pain de campagne from Brett of Real Bread.

And while I couldn’t bear to cook my heirloom tomatoes, neither could I resist eating them immediately. They were typically sweet, acidic and tomato-ey in a salad with cucumber and goat cheese. I added a little olive oil and vinegar, but the tomato juice itself is dressing enough.

Ratatouille is such an ideal dish for this time of year. For one thing, it is a good way to use all that zucchini/summer squash and eggplant that you are feeling so guilty about not eating yet. More importantly, it is a dish of great simplicity that depends entirely on the quality of its ingredients. For some people French cooking has the reputation of being highly technical and focused on transforming raw ingredients into something entirely new—the English used to accuse the French of inventing sauces as a way of disguising bad ingredients buried underneath. But French cooking understands—along with many other culinary traditions— that dishes will only be as good as the ingredients they started with. For something as straightforward as ratatouille, the phrase “garbage in, garbage out” very much applies. Luckily, the produce available in farmers’ markets right now is about as far from garbage as you can get.

There’s really a lot in ratatouille’s favor: it’s simple, it’s hearty, it’s full of flavor, it’s even vegan! About the only downside I can think of is that it can only be made at this time of year, when the peak seasons of its various parts coincide. All the more reason to enjoy it while you can.

I’m trying to decide what to make for the week and I’m in my usual bouncing around cookbooks I’m comfortable with. One of these is the CIA’s Gourmet Meals in Minutes. It occurred to me that I ought to share a little about this book with you because of how much I enjoy using it in my own kitchen. Gourmet Meals is an easy recommendation; it is a great cookbook whether you’re a beginner or a seasoned cook—I know I’ve sung its praises to many of your already. Some basic reasons this is a good buy:

• The photos in the cookbook itself are an inspiration to get cooking (hopefully some of the pictures from our table will inspire you, too). When I was just starting out in the kitchen, I had no sense of “that sounds good” from reading a list of ingredients or a recipe. But “that looks good” is a much easier thing to master. Tom gifted me the book a couple of years ago and the pictures were a big reason he chose it for me, knowing how visual I am in my approach.
• Everything can be made very quickly. They’re not kidding when they say “in Minutes.” 
• I don’t think I’ve made a single thing from this cookbook that wasn’t a pleasant surprise when it arrived at the table. Even when I’ve doubted things in the process of cooking they always turn out better than expected.

A few downsides:

• The book is presented in some ways as a party cookbook, so many of the recipes make a LOT. This can be a challenge when cooking for one or two, but I’ve found it an advantage in the past year as we intentionally plan for leftovers with all of our meals (we don’t actually buy any food specifically for lunch).
• Again, an up and a down… the book tends to use canned ingredients in many cases for the sake of time. But, it’s easy to sub in fresh things (like I did with the Thai soup below, using fresh Enokis instead of canned).
• When they say “gourmet,” they mean a huge variety from around the world. The diversity in this cookbook is a great thing, but if you don’t regularly branch out in the kitchen you may have to give your spice collection a boost and invest in some more “international” staples, if you will, in order to make some of the recipes. 

How much I’ve used this cookbook is the best evidence I can give in its favor. See below for what I think is a complete list with (an incomplete sampling of) photos from my kitchen. I can easily say that I credit this book with giving me confidence in the kitchen. I can be a little Amelia Bedelia sometimes, and this was the first cookbook that helped me make things that were approachable, quick, and pretty (!) at the table. I’m sure Tom is thankful I’ve gone beyond my rotation of macaroni & cheese, frozen ravioli, chili (from cans), lasagna, grilled cheese, cholé, Santa Fe chicken salad, Mexican pizzas, enchiladas, and taco salad… that’s a lot of cheese. 

Last week I made Thai Hot & Sour Soup with Enoki Mushrooms and Shrimp:

Here are a few other pictures that I hunted down in my photo library… Asparagus with Shiitakes, Bowtie Pasta, and Spring Peas:

Risotto with Scallops Shrimp and Asparagus (I love that this page is sticky and flecked with food, I’ve made this a few times!):

Fennel and Chorizo Strudels (why were the photos so terrible from this one?):

Belgian Endive, another not-so-fabulous photo (this one gave me a major oil burn on my foot. Lesson: don’t wear Mary Janes while frying),

Baked Goat Cheese with Mesclun, Pears, and Toasted Almonds:

Soba Noodle Salad:

Hlelem—a Tunisian Vegetable and Bean Soup:

Not pictured: Satay of Beef with Peanut Sauce, Reuben Sandwich, Grilled Steak Salad with Horseradish Dressing, Roasted Beet Salad, Seared Scallops with Fiery Fruit Salsa and Coconut Rice with Ginger, Spicy Vegetable Sauté, Goat Cheese and Red Onion Quesadillas, Capellini with Grilled Vegetables, and Cream of Mushroom Soup.