To paraphrase Sara Bareilles, I’m not gonna write you a ratatouille recipe. (I promise that will be the last Sara Bareilles reference — ever — on this blog.) I’ve done it before, and with farmers markets overflowing with more zucchini and eggplant than a blogger knows what to do with, you can be sure you’ll be seeing a big crop of ratatouille posts on your favorite food blogs in the next week or so. I figure once Disney takes on a topic, there’s really nothing more I can add.

Not that the attention ratatouille garners is undeserved; packed with vegetables at the height of summer ripeness, it is one of the best testaments available to the joy of eating seasonally. In fact there may be no better way to enjoy zucchini, eggplant, bell peppers, onions and tomatoes all at the same time. But the real lesson of ratatouille lies not in the adherence to those core ingredients but in the happy combination of peak season produce, with nothing that’s not in season. Just about any combination will do, as long as the vegetables are fresh and ripe.

Luckily, this is the time of summer when the overabundance in farmers markets helps keep my kitchen stocked with nothing but fresh, ripe vegetables. The motivation for this summer stew was two large eggplants, but as I stooped down to remove these from the crisper drawer I kept seeing additional prospects for a seasonal stew: half a head of cabbage, a green pepper, five small leeks, tomatoes (the latter not, of course, stored in the refrigerator).

The great thing about a stew is you can be pretty lax about procedure since it’s all getting cooked together anyway. I cubed and salted my eggplant, since conventional wisdom suggests doing so will remove some kind of bitterness. I then sauteed sliced leeks and green bell pepper in a large amount of olive oil until the leeks were starting to brown deeply. I added the eggplant cubes and let them brown a bit too. Next went in the half head of cabbage, thinly sliced, a large sprig of thyme, and about ten roma tomatoes that I had pureed (and salted and sugared to make up for really lackluster flavor — you don’t win ‘em all at the farmers market). I added water to just about cover everything and let the pot stew away for a half an hour while I cooked some white rice. Right before serving the dish, I sprinkled it with fragrant basil shreds.

I was happy with the way this turned out, but I hope I don’t have you headed to the store in search of two eggplants, a half head of cabbage, a green pepper, five leeks and ten roma tomatoes because the point of all this was that if the ingredients for your summertime stew are fresh and in season, you won’t go wrong — it’s the spirit, not the letter, 0f a ratatouille recipe.

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.

I’m fully aware of how empty my early farmers market boosterism sounds: “Really, even though you’ll only be able to buy a pint of strawberries and a head of lettuce, it’s totally worth making the trip to the market! Just think what you might find!” Okay, Tom. Whatever.

Well I’m happy to say those weeks are definitively over! As of last weekend, the first Saturday market in June, the market has finally hit its full stride. I could barely contain myself as I went from stall to stall, seizing on the fresh — and small in a cute way — vegetables: Chard! Snap peas! Garlic! New potatoes! Kale! Friseé! Basil! Leeks! Rhubarb! Strawberries! Finally, the makings of a feast.

Markets like these — rife with fresh and tender vegetables — allow me to make my favorite post-farmers market lunch: produce, steamed or blanched, with homemade mayonnaise, hummus, or any other sauce you like to dip them in. I did cheat and supplement the Midtown new potatoes and snap peas with asparagus from The Wedge (but hey, they’re my year round farmers market).

All that and I barely made a dent in the week’s haul. There will be plenty more meals this week derived almost entirely from market produce. The fun is just beginning.

It’s a cruel irony that heat of the late summer sun that produces perfect tomatoes and fragrant basil also makes our homes so hot that the thought of even turning on the oven — let alone cranking it up all the way for perfect pizzas margherita — is unbearable.  By the time I’m willing to endure the 500 degrees blasting away for over an hour necessary for decent pizza crust, the tomatoes are long rotten on the vine and the basil withered or brought indoors. Of course there are always canned tomatoes and greenhouse basil, but if you want to eat more in-season, you have to get a little more creative with your toppings (and loose with your definition of “pizza”).

Potato-Leek Pizza. This classic soup combination works reasonably well for pizza. The potatoes present a bit of a problem since the pizza only spends ten minutes in the oven; they need to be parcooked or sliced extremely thin. I opted for the latter and utilized a mandoline to make slices so thin that the skin of each slice could be seen through the flesh of the potato slice layered above it. A generous shower of olive oil combined with the blazing temperature of the oven slightly fries the potato slices. A sprinkling of leeks and a few cubes of feta completed a pizza of which Martha claimed, “tastes like soup.” In a good way, I think.

Butternut squash-gorgonzola-walnut Pizza. After a well deserved period of squash abstinence, I decided to get back into it by combining one of my least favorite foods — said squash — with one of my favorites: pizza. After sauteeing cubes of butternut squash until tender, I mashed them with butter and enough milk to make the mixture spread easily, then aggressively salted and peppered the mix. To offset the bland sweetness of squash, I used musty, tangy gorgonzola cheese. Both butternut squash and gorgonzola are well complemented by nuts, so I sprinkled on toasted walnuts after baking the pie.

A word of caution to anyone attempting squash pizza: that squash can retain a whole lot of oven heat for a long time. Give yourself extra cooling time before taking a bite! When the pizza did cool down to a reasonable tasting temperature, my taste buds that had not been burned away told me that this was a winning combination, at least as far as anything involving squash can be. Although the gorgonzola tended to overpower the squash, I had applied it with a light hand, so the cheese was well balanced by zones of pure squash. The walnuts were the pepperoni of this pizza, providing spots of excitement amongst the more uniform cheese and crust.

I enjoyed both of these pizzas. They’re not about to replace pizza margherita in my heart, but as a way to use those last late-season farmers’ market veggies — and enjoy a sustained heatwave issuing forth from your oven in the chilly fall — they were pretty good.

It was with some sadness (and wistful thoughts of future Saturday mornings spent sleeping in) that Martha and I mounted our noble bicycles and set out on the ride to the last official Midtown Farmers’ Market of the 2009 season. The weather, while generally cloudy, was punctuated by bursts of sunlight and dominated by a steady autumn wind that elicited some speculation from vendors about how long they would last out there. But they are a hardy bunch and I’m sure they saw the market through to the end (I sure didn’t!).

As promised, I did a good job attacking the crisper drawer over the course of the last week such that we were left with only a bunch of celery and some lemongrass. Which meant it was time to stock up, all the more so since this was the last farmers market of the year before a long winter. Much of my buying took this long view into account by focusing on vegetables that store well: onions, three kinds of potatoes (russets, large red potatoes, and small red potatoes), carrots, parsnips and butternut squash. The real joy of the farmers’ market for me is the fresh, green food: brussels sprouts, broccoli and leeks. Those will be missed later in the year. And it wouldn’t be the fall farmers’ market in Minnesota without apples; I couldn’t resist a ¼ peck of Honeycrisps.

For her part, Martha couldn’t resist some letter press cards by regular market vendors Vandalia Street Press that make use of interesting figure-ground relationships. Nor could she resist including them in the photo of the market haul!

Although this was the last official farmers’ market at Midtown of the fall, there will be more opportunities to get delicious local produce. I will definitely be going to the Midtown Farmers’ Market fundraiser at the Minneapolis Eagles Club (2507 E 25th St) on November 14 where in addition to raffles and music and the usual fundraising hullabaloo there will be a farmers’ market set up in the parking lot. A pretty great way to support a worthy cause while selfishly stocking up on the best vegetables around! (And very conveniently situated before Thanksgiving.) But if planning ahead for Thanksgiving isn’t your thing, Brett of Real Bread informed me that there will also be a special market at the usual place on Wednesday, November 25 from 1–4 PM. Even though the official market season’s over, the Midtown Farmers’ Market won’t leave you out in the cold for great produce this winter.