We’re really on the brink between two seasons at the Farmers’ Market: looking in one direction there are enough ripe tomatoes, ears of sweet corn and red peppers to make you think it’s high summer. But the next stall down is stocked with the winter squash, storage onions and gnarly root vegetables that make you apprehensive of cold months to come. There are some notable changes from the summer market: this week was the first in which I didn’t see cucumbers available anywhere. Onions, which earlier in the year came with their green stems still attached, are coated with brown or red papery skins after being out of the ground for a few weeks. Where you could once buy new potatoes that were perfect lightly steamed and dipped in aïoli, now the potatoes are large and require more aggressive treatment. I am afraid tomatoes and zucchini will be the next to go.

In past weeks I have been reluctant to embrace some of the new fall vegetables, but this week it was time to accept change. It was hard to resist all that beautiful squash! I am a sucker for a pretty package, so I had to buy an orange and green flecked Carnival squash (a flavorful acorn squash variety). I also bought a red Kuri squash on good past experiences and a very strong recommendation from the farmer. Finally, I bought a butternut squash, because it seems to be the most popular variety for recipes — I have a few that use it.

Cabbage isn’t exclusively a fall vegetable; it’s available most of the summer, too. Although I buy a cabbage now and then in the summer, a head is more than I can use in a week or two (so I  end up pickling it). This week, Martha saw some smaller heads of cabbage, and I got to thinking of warm fall cabbage dishes and the sale was made. It didn’t hurt that we could bundle the cabbage with all the shallots we’ll need for the winter for $5.

If you read these farmers’ market posts regularly you would have noticed over the last few weeks that I was really not looking forward to fall. When we got home and laid everything out on the kitchen table, though, I was excited. At the end of summer, I found myself buying the same vegetables each week. There are more than a few ways to combine these vegetables, but I was getting a little bored seeing more or less the same pile every week (I can only imagine your pain, reader). So it was refreshing to see squash and cabbages cropping up. And as I thought through the morning’s bounty trying to figure out how I would use all this stuff up in a week, I noticed that my brain had switched from summer cooking mode to fall: I was thinking less about grilled meats, salads, and slices of fresh tomatoes and more about rich braises of cabbage and apples, deeply roasted squash, and all the other hearty comforts of fall food. With only a month and a half left for the market, there are many good dishes to bring the season to a close.

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.

When Surly Hell was released last week, I prepared myself for what would be my one opportunity to try it (it sold out very quickly) by reading up on the style.  ’Hell’ is German for ‘light’ or ‘pale’, and according to my sage for all things beer, Garrett Oliver, the Helles style was developed as the Bavarian answer to the popularity of Bohemian pilsner. Traditional Bavarian lager was dark and with deeper flavor, Hellesbier was pale, golden and crisp. I found Surly Hell to fit the bill for this style exactly. While it was not a particularly unique beer, it was an excellent one — refreshing and actually quite fun to drink. It’s a shame the production was so limited.

But even if I’ll never get to drink it again, Surly Hell got me interested in Helles beers. On my most recent trip to the Four Firkins, the Helles Schlenkerla Lagerbier caught my eye. When I mentioned to the clerk that I was interested in this beer after trying Hell, he told me that this would be totally different. As it turns out, the Schlenkerla Brewery in Bamberg, the brewer of the Helles in question, is famous for a different beer: smokebeer. Smokebeer is made by smoking the barley malt before brewing. While the Helles I was in the process of buying is not smoked, it’s made with the same equipment as smokebeer, so it has a lot of residual smokiness. I’m not one to be dissuaded at the cash register: smoky Helles it was.

Trying the beer, I can’t say I agree with the clerk about it being totally different from Hell. The underlying beer was quite similar: crisp and sprightly, light-bodied and refreshing. But then there was the smoke. Even though the beer was not smoked, the smoke flavor was fairly strong; a bit like the flavor you got from smelling burning alder or cedar as you smoke a trout (for example). The flavor was not so strong as to drown out everything else that was going on with the beer, but the flavor of smoke was unmistakably there.

What to eat with this golden smoky beer? Barbecue, obviously. But what if you don’t have a grill? Well, then you need to get creative. I was looking for something that would match the smoke in the beer, but, lacking the capacity to actually make smoke, I thought a deep roasting might do the trick. I cut summer squash, zucchini and eggplant from the farmers’ market into large chunks, salted them and let them sit in the colander for an hour to exude some water. I then added a coarsely chopped onion and tossed everything in oil, salt and pepper. I placed everything on a half-sheet pan in the oven for about a half an hour until the vegetables were deeply browned and starting to burn. B

Once the roasted vegetables had cooled slightly, I tossed them with cooked quinoa, big chunks of heirloom tomatoes (these tomatoes were so good off the vine that it seemed a shame to roast them; that would be a good option for improving inferior tomatoes), minced parsley and a lemon vinaigrette (lemon juice, garlic, olive oil, salt and pepper). I thought the zippiness of the beer would be complimented by a lemony salad. And since Helles is so light and refreshing, I had some leeway to make the salad richer, which I accomplished with 4 oz of crumbled goat cheese that immediately became melted goat cheese.

For all the thought that went into constructing the salad around the beer, this pairing was a dud. I thought the Helles aspects of the beer worked well with the pockets of fresh tomato in the salad, the acid of the lemon juice, and as relief from the rich goat cheese. But there was nothing in the salad that could do anything with the beer’s smoke. Roasted vegetables, as much as I might want them to, do not taste smoky — they taste sweet. Perhaps grilling the vegetables over charcoal would fix this problem, but for me that is not an option. After trying the beer, the choice of barbecue seemed so obvious: drinking this beer would be like adding liquid smoke to the barbecue sauce; there would be total continuity between the food and the beer. In fact it’s hard to imagine a more perfect pairing.

As for the salad, I don’t think the idea of pairing with a traditional Helles is a bad one; it was the smoke that was so off-putting. Perhaps if they make another batch of Surly Hell I’ll make this salad again to celebrate.

This was a good beer and a good salad, they just weren’t very good together. Such is the magic of pairings.

I hate to toot my own horn, but I did an awesome job going through all my produce from the farmers’ market last week.  Between pickling, trying new recipes, and actually eating all our leftovers, by the end of the week our fridge, even our vegetable drawer, was looking empty. We even had to go to the grocery store for dinner Friday night since there was nothing left to eat in the house.

With this blank canvas to fill, I think I might have overdone it this morning. It didn’t help that this week instead of my usual school-size backpack I wore my Duluth Pack — something about that giant backpack makes you want to fill it. And with the variety and quality of produce available this time of year, it’s pretty hard to resist. Especially when $3 trays are 2 for $5. But what am I going to do with all this?

The haul for this week was: 3 onions, 8# generic tomatoes, basil, cantaloupe, fennel, garlic, potatoes, salad turnips, poblanos, honey gold tomatoes, variety heirloom tomatoes, eggplant, zucchini and summer squash and radishes. The cantaloupes are new for me this week but Brett and Mary of Real Bread recommended them strongly.

I made sure to return to the Honey Creek Farm stand where last week we bought edamame and sun gold and heirloom tomatoes that made some of the best caprese and Greek salads of all time. More tomatoes, for eating raw, were a must and although there were no edamame this week, there was another interesting vegetable: salad turnips. Apparently these Japanese vegetables taste like a mild radish. Although I like my radishes sharp and spicy, I couldn’t turn down a new vegetable to try.

As for those eight pounds of tomatoes, I bought those with the idea that it is time for me to finally start putting up tomato sauce for the winter. I kick myself every year for failing to do so, so this is the year. I am planning on following Hank Shaw’s instructions for making and bottling the stuff. I figure 8# should give me 3 quart sized jars, a good start.

As for the rest, well, I have no idea. But hopefully I’ll come up with something before next Saturday when it’s time to load up again.