Winter Foods that Taste Like Summer

For obvious reasons, when you are eating out of your stored foods in the winter, many things seem to fall into the same basic strings. Lots of root veggies, some squash, some cabbages, leeks and a few forced plants like endive. Lots of rich, earthy flavors and heavy meals. While that is wonderful against the winter cold, it can get a bit tiresome. Canned goods can help some, but I was wondering if anyone happened to have some unusual ways of eating in the season without always being quite so heavy. So far, the only thing in my toolbox is forcing salsify and winter watermelons.

Hmmm.. I've heard you can force rhubarb indoors as early as christmas. Stewed rhubarb with icecream is always one of my summer favourites. You could freeze some from the main crop I guess.

I dry herbs I can grow whole, store them in glass jars in a cool place, and don't crush them until I use them. This seems to preserve their flavor better, an doesn't really take that much more space.

I also try to mix up the flavours by using different recipes. I recently found a recipe for quite a simple Tahini dressing for drizzling over baked squash. It happens to go very nicely on potatoes as well! Yes, some of the ingredients are things I had to purchase, but a little goes a long way. I don't begrudge having to buy spices that I can't grow in my ecosystem, because they really brighten up a dish when they're usually only a few percent of the total calories on each plate.

+1 for spices. You can make root veggies anything from curry to Cajun.

Sprouts and microgreens pare what we love for that fresh taste. Pea microgreens are what we do since I find them easy to grow and they can be used several ways. Since they taste just like fresh peas, it really gives that out-in-the-garden feel.
Dried peas work great for them, so an easy store in the summer.
They do take a while. The planning ahead is the biggest drawback since they take almost 2 weeks to get them at the size we want.

Cabbage and lettuce would be my first choice for winter foods that taste like spring.

Next broccoli and cauliflower taste like spring to me.

Take your pasta dish and add chopped (pick one) onion leaves, garlic leaves, even those wild onion greens that look like grass from a distance. We like a lot. It's great even on Kraft Mac and cheese!

Is it ok to post recipes here?
(If not please let me know)

Something that ups potatoes and/or root veggies to absolute star 🌟 power is Hasselbach potatoes. In particular I 🧡 J Kenji Lopez-Alt’s version, and one can mix/ sub any starchy root veggie in there as well, if desired:


Cheesy Hasselback Potato Gratin
J. Kenji López-Alt

Watch
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=nZKWmo9wH3s

From Kenji’s book: In ‘The Food Lab,’ the Science of Home Cooking

INGREDIENTS
Yield: 6 servings

* 3ounces finely grated Gruyère or comté cheese
* 2ounces finely grated Parmigiano-Reggiano
* 2cups heavy cream [I use buttermilk]
* 2medium cloves garlic, minced
* 1tablespoon fresh thyme leaves, roughly chopped [I add rosemary and sage and oregano too. Herbs work so well w starches & cheese]
* Kosher salt and black pepper
* 4 to 4½pounds Yukon potatoes, peeled and sliced ⅛-inch thick on a mandoline slicer (7 to 8 medium, see Tips*) [I don’t peel potatoes-comes out great]
* 2tablespoons unsalted butter
* [I add grated onion, or even mushroom and sage, to liquid cheese mixture for extra flava as a variation]

PREPARATION
* Step 1

Adjust oven rack to middle position and heat oven to 400 degrees.
* Grease a 2-quart casserole dish with butter.
* Combine cheeses in a large bowl.
* Transfer ⅓ of cheese mixture to a separate bowl and set aside.
* Add cream, garlic and thyme to cheese mixture. Season generously with salt and pepper. Add potato slices and toss with your hands until every slice is coated with cream mixture, making sure to separate any slices that are sticking together to get the cream mixture in between them.

* Step 2
* Pick up a handful of potatoes, organizing them into a neat stack, and lay them in the [buttered] casserole dish with their edges aligned vertically. Continue placing potatoes in the dish, working around the perimeter and into the center until all the potatoes have been added. The potatoes should be very tightly packed. If necessary, slice an additional potato, coat with cream mixture, and add to casserole.

* Step 3

Pour the excess cream/cheese mixture evenly over the potatoes until the mixture comes halfway up the sides of the casserole. You may not need all the excess liquid.

* Step 4

Cover dish tightly with foil and transfer to the oven. Bake for 30 minutes. Remove foil and continue baking until the top is pale golden brown, about 30 minutes longer. Carefully remove from oven, sprinkle with remaining cheese, and return to oven. Bake until deep golden brown and crisp on top, about 30 minutes longer. Remove from oven, let rest for a few minutes, and serve.

TIP
•Because of variation in the shape of potatoes, the amount of potato that will fit into a single casserole dish varies. Longer, thinner potatoes will fill a dish more than shorter, rounder potatoes.
•When purchasing potatoes, buy a few extra in order to fill the dish if necessary. Depending on exact shape and size of potatoes and casserole dish, you may not need all of the cream mixture.
•I’ve substituted sweet potatoes, kohlrabi and celery root for some of the potatoes with success.

I would say a good sweet pumpkin breaks the monotony with something fruity-tasting.

Summer is actually rather unproductive in my bioregion! We don’t have too many fruits here in the valley so it’s mostly green vegetables and mushrooms. Sometimes there will be a good flush of fruit—black raspberries, at least, can always be counted upon. Maybe I just need to get out more, though.

I tried rock tripe recently and it tasted like mushrooms. They also probably have lots of Vitamin D3 as a lichen, so helpful for warding off winter health issues. I am hoping to try more different species of lichen too but unsure where to start. Rock tripe is relatively uncommon and slow growing so I’d be careful of harvesting too much. There are plenty of greenshield lichens around and I’d love to know whether those could be made edible.

Homemade hominy is always tasty too and has a particular freshness.

When I think of summer, I think of foods with the following qualities: light, wet, crunchy, cold, fruity, sour, bright.  So going outward from that, and thinking about what I have on hand (or can make with what I have on hand), I think adding pickled vegetables and tart, light condiments (like vinegars or fruit sauces) would inject a little sunshine into heavy meals.

I'm hooked on homemade grape molasses right now.  It's just grape juice (Concord, with the tartaric acid already precipitated out) reduced down to a thin syrup.  I use it like I would balsamic vinegar.  Just this month I've used it on roasted mixed vegetables, in a marinade for pork chops, and on toast (with plain butter or, even better, miso butter).

I did a lot of fermenting this fall, and eating the pickles as a side dish or a mix-in has really been perking things up.  I do a lot of things with a kind of kimchi flavor profile, and there's just something about the combination of ginger, garlic, and apple that add the right kind of aromatics to cut through the fartiness of cabbage and radishes while bringing out the sweet and fresh elements of carrot or onion.  

Honorable mention: sliced carrots and onions, lightly salted and put in the fridge overnight (Japanese quick-pickling, more or less), then dressed with a light fruit or herbal vinegar.

Like S Tonin we also go for fermented vegetables, to get good vegetables out of season. I also use herbs and edible flowers, that I have preserved. Some are preserved in sugar, and a lot are freeze dried or dehydrated. One of my favorite summer drinks is purple basil and lemon tea. It lost some flavor with dehydration, so I use a freeze dryer now. It can be consumed both hot and cold. Sodas, water kefir or kombucha with elderflowers and lemons also has the sense and flavor of summer. While I haven’t tried freeze drying lettuce, we do freeze dry cabbages, which rehydrate 95% of what they were. They make nice salads, with shredded carrots and other root vegetables.
We also love eating the no potatoes salad from Elena’s pantry. It contains cauliflower, eggs, celery with a creamy dressing and is served cold.