Summer Skillets are back!

The corn, squash and beans "Three Sisters" are ripe and ready to eat this month. We've eaten sweet corn, zucchini and "beans and greens," in addition to plucking the backyard green beans and eating them straight off the bush when they are small and tender. I love summer squashes like zucchini and pattypan and cucumber, and I'm waiting impatiently for the winter squashes to ripen on their long vines stretching out of my garden box toward the house.

All of these "Three Sisters" taste great with another of the summer/fall staples in our area, cooking greens. This year, one Swiss chard plant from some pretty old seeds was successful in the backyard box. It's time to ramp up the enthusiasm for greens because from here on out in the CSA box, I predict there will be a minimum of two greens each week.

The ubiquitous and ever-flexible zucchini teams up with our county's major export product, corn, and a bit of earthy chard in this summertime skillet. The quantity is large enough that the Dutch oven or chicken fryer is a more appropriately-sized cooking vessel. It's quick to prepare, provided you've cut off the corn kernels and kept them from a previous meal of sweet corn this week.

Smoky Summer Vegetable Skillet
2 to 3 Tbsp olive oil
1/3 cup sliced onion
3 cloves garlic, smashed with flat side of knife
1 foot-long, fat zucchini (scrape out seeds if it has tough, mature seeds in it)
handful of Swiss chard, approximately 8-12 oz weight
the kernels cut off from 6 ears of cooked sweet corn
2 tsp cumin
1 tsp Spanish smoked paprika
salt and pepper to taste

Heat oil over medium-high heat in a large, deep skillet/Dutch oven. Saute onion in oil. While it is cooking, cut zucchini into long strips and dice. Add garlic to the onion and stir one minute. Add diced zucchini and stir occasionally. While zucchini is cooking, clean chard and strip the leaves off the stems. Chop the leaves, save the stems for another dish or compost them.

Put corn into pan with cumin and smoked paprika when zucchini is somewhat translucent. Stir in chard when corn has started to heat through. Stir and cook briefly until chard wilts. Season to taste with salt and pepper.

Serving suggestions: by itself; on rice, quinoa or couscous; with bread or on top of toast; topped with a fried egg.

This next recipe was today's lunch, created and eaten hastily when I issued a spontaneous lunch invitation to two of Andrew's friends, who were passing through to drop him off on their way back home from Indianapolis. 

Tart, tangy tomatillos are probably cheating on my low-acid diet, but they are so good with rice and beans and I didn't want to waste this treat from the CSA box. I tried to leave most of them in the serving dish and only put a few slices on my plate. Sharing is better than eating them all myself, right?

When paired with a large salad, this dish served four. If it were a one-dish meal, I'd say it is two portions.

Tangy Tomatillo-Bean Skillet

4 Tbsp olive oil
1/2 cup chopped onion
2 cloves garlic, sliced
1/2 tsp ground cumin
1/2 tsp smoked Spanish paprika
1/2 tsp ground coriander
1 pint tomatillos, washed
1 cup leftover cooked rice
One 15-oz can black beans, rinsed and drained
salt and pepper to taste

Cut tomatillos into thick vertical slices, then cut each slice in half to make half-moon shapes. Heat olive oil to medium-high heat in a nonstick skillet. Saute onion until starting to become translucent, add garlic and stir one minute. Add tomatillos and spices and stir frequently until tomatillos are tender. Add rice, stirring and cutting with spoon to separate rice grains. Add black beans and heat through, stirring frequently, and season with salt and pepper.