While it can be tough to think of fall cooking throughout the summer, now is the best time to stock up on crucial food sources to prepare unique dishes during the harvest season. There are seven things I’m putting in right now before the primary leaves turn, whether it’s using the abundant summer food to prepare a few things to hide in the cooler or storage or simply anticipating what you’ll require when fall arrives.
Garlic scapes
Instead of using the fresh, I find myself gravitating toward this current rancher’s market find once I’ve pureed them and stored them in the cooler to give oomph to sauces, stews, and dressings. I blanch quickly to barely cook, then purée with a little unblemished oil and freeze on an ice 3D form plate. These pieces have a vibrant garlic flavour that adds a nice touch of complexity when the weather changes when defrosted. When lasagna season arrives, it’s extraordinary to make a new version of garlic bread.
Fresh dried spices
The end of the summer is when I perform my yearly flavour refreshment. Because dried spices lose a lot of their potency as they sit, and fall cooking calls for deep, rich flavours, I like to set aside this time to get rid of my old flavours and spices and load in new ones to deepen my cooking throughout the fall and winter. For both prepping and delectable cuisine, I’ll go into ground spices like cinnamon, cardamom, clove, and nutmeg, as well as fragrant seeds like cumin and fennel, as well as a variety of bean stew peppers for fruity and blossom heat. The dried spices I use regularly? Thyme, rosemary, sage, and oregano are some of the most popular herbs.
Tropea onions
These long, torpedo-shaped red onions are just starting to show up in rancher’s commercial areas, and when they do, I’m all over them. They are excellent for everything from cured onions to onion jam that I can save in containers to clumps of caramelized onions that I can store in the cooler, and they are slightly better than regular red onions. I can even go so far as to say that I’m relieved for their ability to use the entire fall and winter.
Grains
Fall cooking quickly shifts to a heartier tone, and I need dishes with nutty tastes, excellent bite, and a smooth surface. The leading fall cooking magazines hit the newsstands, and there’s some amazing-looking grain risotto or freekeh pilaf recipe, and the merchants clear their shelves faster than you can say carbs reign. As a result, I plan and purchase a portion of my #1 grains now, ensuring that my washroom is ready for any grain bowl, salad, or soup. Consider buckwheat groats, wheat berries, or novel rice like dark rice or bamboo rice alternatives to traditional grains.
Shelling beans
Cooking crisp shelled beans is a very different experience from cooking dried beans. The flavour is fresh, the surface is luxuriously smooth, and the cooking time is- a fraction of dry beans. Nothing is worth looking at. In a similar vein, when they arrive in the commercial sectors, I shell till my fingers bleed and prepare bunches of both plain and cooked beans to keep in the cooler. I’ll make some for tacos with cooked poblanos and cumin and some for soups and stews with only aromatics and spices. I’ll freeze them in quart-sized sacks to use for easy suppers throughout the fall, when you need the abundance of beans but don’t want to give up the unique flavour that new beans provide.
Rutabaga
Rutabaga is a root vegetable. It belongs to the Brassica plant family. Its members are commonly referred to as cruciferous vegetables. It looks like a turnip and is spherical with a caramel white tone. It’s widely described as a cross between a turnip and a cabbage. The rutabaga, sometimes known as “swede” or “Swedish turnip,” is a mainstay in Northern European cuisine. They are incredibly nutrient-dense and have a high cell-reinforcing content.
Fresh Dried Herbs
A small amount of fixings is all that is required to transform a dish into something spectacular. Spices are also the most effective flavour enhancers. Sprinkle some in your spaghetti, mixed greens, sautéed veggies, curries, charred rice, and even plunges and sauces to provide a burst of flavour. Although the new forms are most likely to pursue their distinct flavours, their dry variants fill the gap, especially when the new ones are not immediately available. Also, that is not all. You may use them to make seasoned oils as well!
