The worst part about living an apartment is that we can’t garden (the best part is never having to mow a lawn or shovel a driveway). Sure, we can put a box or pot in the window that will yield a pepper or a little bundle of herbs, but it’s nothing compared to what even the smallest yard will produce with modest effort. Luckily, at this time of year our home-owning friends are starting to get overwhelmed by the bounty of their gardens – a combination of guilt in wasting a single hard-won veggie and the feeling that if one eats another eggplant that’s it for them – and Tom and I can swoop in to reap the benefits save the day. And so it was that Friday after work Tom and I raided my friend Alan’s garden while Alan was away at work and his dogs safely locked up inside the house.

Alan grows long, thin Japanese cucumbers, a variety of tomatoes, and many other types of vegetables and herbs. Along the side of his house he’s created a system of trusses to support a high density of tomatoes and peppers, using strings and posts to support the plants. In the back, he has another garden along the fence where cucumbers share space with onions, celery, beets, greens, and more. Looking at it all we were amazed with what can be grown in a well-planned, small space.

Not wanting to take more than our share (though Alan would certainly have encouraged more on us had he been there), we gathered a bowlful of black cherry tomatoes, three cucumbers, and a sampling of tiny peppers and basil. Tom put together a Greek salad with the cucumbers and tomatoes – and mint and oregano from our own window box. Thanks Alan!

For the salad, combine the following in a large bowl:

• Cherry tomatoes, halved
• Cucumbers, peeled and sliced
• Greek Feta cheese, crumbled by hand
• 1 large shallot, sliced
• 2 sprigs fresh mint, finely chopped
• 2 sprigs fresh oregano, finely chopped

For the dressing:

• Juice of 1 lemon
• 3 tablespoons olive oil
• 1/2 teaspoon sumac
• Salt and fresh ground pepper to taste

Whisk the dressing and taste for seasoning. Pour over the salad and toss.

The light chill today was a reminder that fall – my favorite cooking season – is upon us. Fall brings many hearty possibilities ruled out by summer’s heat; suddenly it is possible, even desirable, to have the oven on for a few hours. Enter the braise–meat and vegetables stewed in rich liquid until tender.

This particular recipe was inspired by the small cabbages that Martha insisted we buy at the farmers’ market. When I saw them, my mind wandered to the bowl of crab apples sitting at home and the thick-cut pork chops I keep wanting to buy at Clancey’s. And so a braise was born.

Braised Pork, Apples and Cabbage

Some of the visual appeal of this dish is from the small (5″ diameter) cabbages that we found at the farmers’ market. If only large cabbages are available, use one, roughly chopped, and omit the browning step for the cabbage. Four regularly-sized, tart apples can be substituted for the crab apples; cut them into eighths, rather than quarters.

• 2 tablespoons olive oil, divided
• 2# bone-in pork roast
• Salt and pepper
• 1 large onion, sliced
• 2 fennel stalks or a small bulb, roughly chopped
• 1 quart pork stock (recipe below), cider or water
• 4 cloves of garlic, peeled and crushed
• 3 small heads cabbage
• 8 crab apples (about 2″ in diameter)
• 2 tablespoons apple cider vinegar

Preheat oven to 300°F.

Heat 1 tablespoon oil in a large Dutch oven (one that has an oven-proof lid) over medium-high heat. Thoroughly coat the pork roast with salt and pepper. Place the pork in the Dutch oven and brown on all sides, a few minutes per side. Remove the pork to a plate and drain all but 1 tablespoon of fat. Return pot to medium heat and add the onions and fennel. Cook until onions are soft and starting to brown. Add garlic cloves, pork roast, and enough pork stock/cider/water to come most of the way up the side of the roast. Bring to a boil, cover and place in oven. Cook for one hour.

Meanwhile, cut the cabbages into quarters. Cut the apples into quarters and slice out their cores. Heat remaining one tablespoon of olive oil in a 12″ skillet over medium-high heat until shimmering. Add apple slices, cut side down. Cook until deep golden brown, about 4 minutes. Nudge the apples to the other cut side and cook until brown. Transfer apples to a plate. Place cabbage in skillet, one cut side down, and cook until starting to blacken on the edges. Flip the cabbage to the other cut side and repeat. Transfer cabbage to a plate.

After one hour of cooking, remove Dutch oven from oven. Taste the liquid and add salt and pepper as desired. Add cabbage, apples and vinegar and stir to combine. Arrange the pot so the liquid mostly covers everything. Return to oven and cook for another one hour, or until the pork is tender, but not necessarily falling off the bone.

Strain the liquid into a stockpot or large skillet. Return the solids to Dutch oven and cover to keep warm. Bring braising liquid to a rolling boil and continue cooking until reduced by half (or, until you’re tired of waiting). Season to taste with salt and pepper.

Arrange apples, cabbage, onions and fennel in a wide, shallow serving bowl. Slice or pull pork and arrange in center of vegetables. Pour reduced braising liquid over top of everything. Serve with hearty bread for sopping up the juice.

Quick Pork Broth:

Just in case you don’t have pork stock sitting around in the freezer (you might want to check in the back), here’s a quick way to get a flavorful broth that will work well as a braising liquid for pork.

• ¼# Ground pork
• Half an onion, roughly chopped (or onion scraps)
• 1 small carrot, roughly chopped

Combine all ingredients in a 2 quart saucepan. Add 4 ½ cups of water. Bring to a boil, then reduce to a bare simmer and allow to cook, partially covered, for one hour. Strain off the solids and discard.

Let’s be honest: I’m not the pickling artist in the family. Normally I leave these things to others, but something needed to be done with the two banana peppers from last month’s trip to the market–they were starting to look a little sad.

Wishfully thinking about pizza possibilities, I decided there was no choice but to pickle these babies. Tom was busy making dinner, so this had to be a Martha project. As Tom pointed out, a one-quart Ball jar wasn’t going to work for two lonely peppers. Not wanting to give up for lack of a not-too-big jar, I dug a Bonne Maman jam jar out of the recycling and set to slicing:

• 2 banana peppers, seeded and sliced into rings

Once I had the peppers sliced, I stuffed them into the jar.

For my pint-sized jar I needed a little under a cup of pickling juice. First question. What goes into the jars? (I guess I should have read this post a little more closely.) Tom normally uses two parts vinegar to one part water with 2 tablespoons of salt and adds sugar as applicable. Working with a small jar, I upped the vinegar a bit and brought down the salt:

• 3/4 cup white vinegar
• 1/4 cup water
• 1 tablespoon salt
• 1/2 tablespoon sugar

With these four ingredients combined in a small pot over high heat, I opened the spice cupboard and asked a few more questions. Tom had advice for the pickling spices: garlic and mustard seeds were a must, and I offered up a bay leaf and red pepper flakes–then thought better of it–and opted for whole dried chiles instead.

• 2 small garlic cloves, smashed
• Pinch of mustard seeds (black, yellow, or both)
• 1 bay leaf
• 1—2 dried chiles, whole (or substitute a spoonful of red pepper flakes)

The next step is to add the pickling spices and garlic to the jar of peppers. Once the vinegar mixture has come to a boil, pour it over the peppers until it reaches the rim of the jar.

Done! Now our soon-to-be-pickles need to cool. After the jar and contents hit room temperature, cover, refrigerate, and enjoy in a day or two… preferably on pizza.

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.