I love fall; it is my favorite season. But for whatever reason, be it the cold summer we’ve had or how much I’ve been enjoying the summer, I am not ready for fall to be here. So it was pretty jarring to see crates full of large winter squashes at the Midtown Farmers’ Market this morning. Surely it’s not squash time already!? I usually make a point of buying whatever is new in the market any given week, but I just couldn’t bring myself to buy winter squash. Not yet.

Luckily, things are not all squash and storage potatoes. There were still plenty of tomatoes, and I got my usual sungolds and assorted heirlooms. Summer is hanging on enough for there still to be sweet corn. There is an abundance of peppers of all varieties—with the deals you can get on red bell peppers at this time of year they are impossible to pass up. Tomatillos are also in season, and you can still buy green beans, although they are getting a bit tougher than they were earlier in the year. Cucumbers are still available but they are either very large or, as with the ones I bought, very, very small. Perfect for cornichons! Herbs and lettuces, which have been available most of the season, are still available. The beets, potatoes and onions are representing the root vegetable contingent; I haven’t seen a lot of turnips yet. More of those in the fall.

In perhaps another sign of fall, apples are everywhere. None of the vaunted Honeycrisps yet (let alone any SweeTangos), but as much Zestar and Gingergold as you could ever want. Given my preference for unique produce, I went for the crab apples. Yes, crab apples. As the vendor pointed out, crab apples have an undeserved bad reputation and, sampling one, I had to agree. They were not quite as tart as I like, but they had good crisp texture and a nice, compact size.

With guests in town for Labor Day weekend, this time Martha’s sister and two nephews, our usual bike ride was traded for the car. This meant we were able to bring home fresh flowers (thanks to Sara!) and eggs, which are usually a bit tough to get home in one piece inside a backpack. Martha’s nephew John picked out some extra-sharp cheddar from the cheese vendor as well.

As you an see, the splendor of summer is still in ready evidence everywhere at the farmers’ market, but the trickle of fall crops will become a steady flow before too long. All the more reason to get to the market as soon as possible.

With Martha out of town all week, I needed to hold back at the Midtown Farmers’ Market. There’s only so much produce one person can go through in a week! On the other hand, it’s the first day of August, what feels like the midpoint of the growing season, and that means there is tons of basically irresistible produce. I did the best that I could with restraint, but I am only a man. In terms of summer produce, there’s really anything you could ever want: summer squash, cucumbers, lettuces, kale, herbs, sweet corn, eggplant, carrots, radishes, beets, some peppers. Tomatoes are still just getting started: only a few stands have them and their are not many varieties to choose between. But who can resist in-season tomatoes, even if it’s just the beginning of the season?

Since I’m on my own this week, my strategy for buying was based on projects. I bought a bunch of dill, a quart of jalapeños and a bunch of pearl onions with pickles in mind. Specifically, I need to preserve a ton of cucumbers from last week before they tragically rot in the crisper drawer, as well as some even older beans. I may also pickle the jalapeños on their own. I doubt I’ll have any trouble going through my five tomatoes, but they can always be turned into a canned salsa if need be. I bought broccoli with a recipe in mind that should feed me for a few days, and while I didn’t have anything in mind for sweet corn I’m really a sucker for the stuff and couldn’t pass it up.

And speaking of not being able to pass up, take a look at those raspberries!

Living as a student in Cairo, I quickly learned what my cheapest meal options were: kushari, fuul, and best of all, ta’amiya — known elsewhere as falafel. For the equivalent of 5¢, one of these delicious little sandwiches was mine: pita bread (‘aysh baladi) stuffed with fried balls of spiced fava beans, lettuce, cucumber, tomato and carrot all topped off with yogurt sauce. Three or four of these was all I needed for lunch most days, with all my nutritional bases covered: bread, vegetables, beans, dairy.  Of course, eating uncooked vegetables for lunch daily, a practice which we were repeatedly advised against, might have been behind my chronic intestinal problems throughout my stay in Egypt, as might have been my switch to an almost all-bean diet. But for a 15¢ lunch, I was willing to put up with a little hardship.

After leaving Egypt (and allowing a suitable period of separation), I began to crave ta’amiya again, but since I have never lived anywhere with a significant Egyptian expat community it was impossible to find. Sure, I could find falafel, but it never tasted quite right — no doubt the result of blending fava beans with chickpeas, or omitting the favas altogether. With no restaurants around to satisfy my needs, the only option left to me was to make my own.

Luckily, I had the foresight to buy a cookbook in Egypt, which featured a good ta’amiya recipe. The basis of ta’amiya is fava beans, but a different variety of favas than those used for fuul. In fuul, it is crucial to get the round, brown favas that are about the size of pinto beans. For ta’amiya, you want the bigger variety that is a bit more commonly available. Ideally, you’ll be able to find the variety known as ‘fuul madshush’, which are already shelled and therefore white in color. Unfortunately, I’ve never actually been able to find such beans, so after an overnight soak I dig my hand into the pot and start shelling beans. You can make it a game: see how many beans you can shell in an hour, then try to double that amount.

With soaked, shelled beans ready to serve as the body of the ta’amiya, it is time to add in the flavorings. The dominant flavor in ta’amiya is dill. This was a bit surprising to me since I think of Middle Eastern food as being more about parsley and cilantro. I use a lot of fresh dill, and for good measure throw in a little parsley and cilantro. Next, a good dose of various allia: 10 cloves of garlic, an onion, and green onions or leeks. Finally spices: cumin, cayenne, salt and black pepper.

All of the ingredients are roughly chopped and tossed together. Great. But that won’t fry — you need a paste! If you were an Egyptian housewife of modest means you’d be reaching for your biggest mortar and pestle, but if you were a twenty-something lazy neo-orientalist you’d bust out the food processor. Because the beans need to be ground pretty fine for the patties to stay together in the hot oil, I grind them in several batches. After all is ground, I knead the mixture with my hands to make sure everything is distributed evenly. The mixture should hold together and have a pleasing green hue from all the herbs.

When you’re satisfied that the beans are as ground as they are going to be, it’s time to shape patties. The size of the patties in Egypt was rather small, maybe a couple of tablespoons, but to save time I make mine bigger, a rough handful. For frying, I use peanut oil heated to 375°. Reaching the right temperature is crucial — if the oil is too cold the ta’amiyas will break apart and you’ll be left with a big mess of oily crumbs. I learned this the hard way at least a couple of times.

The patties don’t need to fry long, just a few minutes until they are golden brown. I usually rotate mine a few times during the frying because it makes me feel like I know what I’m doing.

So you’ve got some ta’amiya. But as with fuul, at least half the fun of this dish lies in the toppings. Fresh pita goes without saying. Yogurt is also needed, preferably some kind of yogurt sauce with garlic and tahini. For vegetables, the classic combination is lettuce, cucumber and tomato. With the summer Farmers’ Market being my main source of produce, though, I have been going more seasonal: lettuce, radishes and spring onions tossed with sumac. I also had some rutabagas pickled with beets sitting in the fridge just for such an occasion.

I hardly need to explain what happens next. Put the ta’amiya in a pita (for authentic Egyptian style crush the patty a little), add topping of your choice, and enjoy. It probably cost more than 5¢ to make, but if you factor in the cost of a plane ticket to Cairo, you’re really coming out ahead.

Amazing what two weeks will do. I missed the last two weeks of the Midtown Farmers’ Market while on a trip home (and enjoying the very fine Midland Farmers’ Market). You might recall that my last trip, while exciting because of the first appearance of asparagus, was a bit disappointing since that was the only fresh vegetable to be had. This week, the market really exploded with summer produce—I can finally buy (more than) enough fresh vegetables for the week.

Greens. Greens are the most readily available thing right now: tons of lettuces, spinach, kale, bok choi and kohlrabi were available, as well as every kind of herb. I picked up a bunch of kale, nearly a pound of spinach, and an assortment of salad greens. Not a bad deal for 6 dollars,though I had to spend about an hour washing and drying greens at home. A bunch of dill and a bunch of parsley came home as well since I had a use for them in mind.
Roots. The first spring onions are available, and there are plenty of radishes to be had. So far, no sign of baby beets or turnips. I cannot resist buying radishes whenever I see them, nor could I turn down sprightly little purple onions.
Peas. Sweet peas were out in full force this weekend—every farmer seemed to have an abundance of them. They are sweet and tender.
Rhubarb. Rhubarb, the herald of spring in these parts (along with asparagus), is still available. I have not had nearly enough rhubarb this year so I had to have some.

I have some ideas for how to use all this great produce, but this is the first week where I have more fresh food than I know what to do with! I’m sure I’ll figure something out and have an empty fridge by next Saturday morning!

I’m not a fan of the lazy bread movement. All the no-knead breads that are so in vogue right now for me miss the basic fun of breadmaking, not to mention the satisfaction. I enjoy taking the time to plan my bread formula, mix the ingredients, knead the dough, allow the dough to rise for as long as it needs and to bake the bread in a pre-heated hearth set up. Using natural yeast only prolongs this process. But it also makes the final bread feel more like your own.

Good bread takes time. It can take up to three days from start to finish to make a loaf of my standard wild-yeast bread, from refreshing the starter to waiting for the yeast to decide to rise to finally getting the loaves out of the oven. That’s fine if you’ve planned ahead, but what happens when it’s 2 o’clock in the afternoon and you need bread that night? Even No-Knead bread uses an overnight rest in the refrigerator to develop gluten. Some people might reasonably say, “you go buy some,” but I have managed to develop a pretty strong guilt complex about buying bread. Instead, inspired by this post at The Paupered Chef (via Serious Eats) I decided to test the limits of lazy, carefree bread with focaccia in less than three hours.

Focaccia is a rustic bread, which means it should be made from very wet dough. My target hydration was 80% and I wanted to use 16 oz of flour, so I was looking for 12.8 oz of water, which I rounded to 12 3/4 oz due to limitations of my scale. After whisking my pound of flour with about a teaspoon and a half of salt and two teaspoons of instant yeast, I added in my water and stirred to combine. The dough looked like this:

At this point the dough would probably have benefited from some kneading. This could easily be done in a stand mixer (as in the Cook’s Illustrated ciabatta recipe) or, less easily, by stirring with a strong arm. But since I was shooting for lazy I left it like that, covered the bowl and put it in the oven, where I figured the pilot light would give my best chance of a rapid rise. I headed to the store to get the rest of dinner.

The oven rising worked wonderfully; in about an hour the dough looked ready to pan. I spread a thick layer of olive oil in a smallish sheet pan and pressed the dough out. At this point, it was behaving like any other dough, albeit a very wet one.

After about another hour the dough was looking bubbly and puffy, like focaccia should. I had already preheated my oven to 450° with my stone in place. For toppings, I decided to follow the Paupered Chef and use parsley, as well as sea salt and a lot of olive oil.

After 25 minutes in the oven (about two and a half hours since I began the project) it was golden brown and crispy. I let it cool for a half hour and then it was ready to slice and eat.

How was it? Well, definitely not bad. All the olive oil I used ensured that it had a crunchy, crackly crust as well as big flavor. The texture was pretty solid but not as chewy as I would have liked. This was pretty obviously going to happen since it was never kneaded nor really allowed to rest; the gluten never stood a chance. You can see the lack of gluten development in the crumb, which is extremely tight for such a wet dough. If I had kneaded or rested this more, there would be the nice big holes that I like so well. But I just didn’t have enough time to make this bread perfectly, and for three hours from flour to mouth on a lazy Sunday, I’ll take it.