An Early Fall Powerhouse Vegan Salad

Approximate quantities: 1 head of butter lettuce, roughly chopped; 3/4 of a cup of cooked brown rice; 2 Kirby cucumbers, cut lengthwise cut lengthwise into thin spears, then into 1-inch segments; kernels of 1 ear of grilled corn; about a cup of grilled wax beans, roughly chopped; 2 heirloom tomatoes, roughly chopped; 3 medium carrots, sliced into thin disks; 2 medium sweet potatoes, peels, chopped into 1-2” cubes and tossed with olive oil, salt, pepper, and Dried Icelandic Kelp, and roasted at 425 degrees for about 20-25 minutes; 1 grilled red bell pepper, roughly chopped; 1 16-ounce can of chickpeas, crisped in a skillet or on a sheet pan, and 1 medium sized watermelon radish, sliced into thin crescents drizzled with olive oil, vinegar, salt and pepper — although it also would be good with tahini dressing

Serves 2 as a main.

A Larger Plum or Fig Torte

My grandmother wasn’t much of a cook. She could cook and she did cook three meals a day, seven days a week for more than 25 years — from when she got married in October of 1946 to when my Mom, her younger child, went to college, in September of 1971. After that, I imagine she continued to cook at least one or two meals a day for even most of the 70s, so by the time I was born, in the early 80s, she was really done.

The one thing that she continued to do was bake. I remember her making pies when I was little and then, at some point, and I don’t remember when exactly, sometime in the middle of my childhood, she started to make a plum cake.

I had no idea where the recipe came from. I had no idea how she made it. She was particular about buying “Italian plums” when they were in season so that she could make the cake — and to buy extra plums to make cakes to freeze.

By then, my grandfather had fully retired, and so they were traveling a lot, including frequently to Italy and the Mediterranean, and I think I just assumed that it was a recipe that she’d discovered on her travels. I needn’t go on about the cake; it was delicious. The plums would collapse into jammy goodness. The ratio of cake to fruit was perfect. It was what we ate for dessert on Sunday nights after our family dinner for years.

After a long while, sometime in the early 90s, when I was in my early teens, my grandmother announced she had a new dessert. A peach tart that she’d had a party that she’d very much enjoyed. She’d gotten the recipe from the friend of the friend who’d made it and she was very excited for us all to try it.

When she served it, it was terrible and almost inedible. We all tried to politely eat it but it quickly devolved when my Uncle inquired about who specifically had given her the recipe for the new “apple” dessert. My grandmother’s face froze. I jumped in to correct him and defend her, “It’s peach, Uncle D. Can’t you taste the fuzz?” I said.

”They are peeled,” my grandmother said icily and glared at both of us.

This briefly silenced the whole family and we all returned to eating the vanilla ice cream atop the terrible tart. After a few tense moments, my Mother sensed that maybe the door had been cracked. “Who gave you this recipe, Mom?” she asked, “Has she given you any other recipes?”

The way that my mother emphasized “other” sent us all over the edge and even my grandmother laughed.

But she wasn’t ready to throw in the towel. She told us how delicious it had been when she’d had it at Sylvia’s and how nice Sylvia’s friend had been on the phone reading it to her. Then she got up to get the card she’d transcribed the recipe to to see what had gone wrong.

My mother who is not much of a baker herself immediately honed in on the last instruction: Bake for 45 minutes at 450 degrees.

“Mom, that cannot be right!?!? Did you bake this for 45 minutes at 450 degrees!!!!!!?????” she asked.

After clarifying with the original author, and adjusting to 35 minutes at 350 degrees, the peach tart replaced the plum cake and became my grandmother’s go-to dessert. We ate it for about decade as well, until the early 2000s, when my grandmother began to suffer from Ahlziemer’s and her ability to bake and follow the the sequential steps of a recipe was lost.

This was just around the time that I started to really teach myself to cook and experiment with recipes and shop for local produce. To the best of my recollection, I saw the small, purple Italian plums at Eastern Market and the cake came flooding back to me.

I bought them and started googling. I knew that it was an “Italian” Plum Cake but that was about it. Fifteen years ago, the internet wasn’t what it is today. The New York Times had a few different c systems of digitized archives, behind different pay walls. The Food Network didn’t make all of the recipes from their shows available online. As Ruth has now explained, Gourmet’s recipes were on Epicurious, sometimes.

I read through a lot of recipes and none seemed exactly right but the best that I could come up with was one of Martha’s, but the texture of the cake was wrong and the ratio of plum-to-cake was wrong no matter how much I increased the amount of plums.

I probably could have asked my grandmother for her recipe but she had forgotten a lot and it had been a long time since she’d last made it. It just didn’t occur to me that would have kept the recipe. Or that if she had, she would be able to find it. I think I may have also doubted that she even would even could remember her baking days at that point. Telling her that she had once been a skilled baker would have just been too sad.

I don’t know why I never asked my grandfather. That’s what really makes no sense looking back. His memory was amazing. He definitely would have remembered the cake. My guess is, it didn’t occur to me that he’d have known where she got the recipe. Regardless, for whatever reason, I never asked him either.

My grandmother passed away in February of 2015 and my grandfather passed away a year later in March of 2016. As we slowly started to clean out their house, I came across my grandmother’s old recipe box that I’d seen on the back counter in the kitchen as a child but that had disappeared and that I’d thought had been thrown away. Flipping through it, there they were, one right after the other, Sylvia’s Peach Tart, and Marion Burros’ Plum Torte.

By then, at least 10 years had passed since I’d first started searching and I’d largely given up and resigned myself to Martha’s recipe. I immediately googled “marion burros’ plum torte.” It was comic and tragic; the great “mystery” was solved. My grandmother’s utterly unique and un-replicable cake is quite literally the most re-published recipe of all time in the NY Times.

It’s quite a testament to my grandmother that a cake that the entire country had been eating was something that I thought was uniquely hers.

Without further ado, here is my extremely minorly tweaked and upsized version of the Marion Burros’ Plum Torte. I like to add the cinnamon to the batter and also the zest of 1 lemon. And, I’ve increased the size to make it in a standard 9x13” rectangular cake pan because whether you are making this for the 1st time or the 100th, I promise, you, it will go quickly.

Ingredients:

225 grams sugar
1 1/2 sticks unsalted butter, softened
180 grams unbleached all-purpose flour, or a 50:50 mix of unbleached all-purpose flour and whole wheat pastry flour
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon of kosher salt
Zest of 1 lemon
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
3 eggs
18-24 pitted purple plums, halved or 18-24 fresh figs, halved
1 tablespoon turbinado sugar and lemon juice for topping

Heat oven to 350 degrees

Cream the sugar and butter and butter and add then lemon zest and 1/2 teaspoon of cinnamon and continue to mix for about 1 more minute

Add the eggs one at a time — per Dorie’s Dimply Plum Cake instructions, and beat for a minute after each egg goes in

Mix the flour, baking powder, and salt in with a spatula until just incorporated

Spoon the batter into a 9x13” baking pan and place the plum or fig halves skin side up on top of the batter

Sprinkle lightly with turbinado sugar and lemon juice and bake for 40 minutes

Dimply Peach and Plum Cake

Dorie’s recipe by way of Smitten Kitchen with a few notes and expanded to a 9x13 pan.

Ingredients:

8 tablespoons, 1 stick, unsalted butter, at room temperature
215-220 grams, light brown sugar
Grated zest of 1 whole orange and 1 whole lemon
3 large eggs
120 ml flavorless oil, such as canola or safflower
2 1/4 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
3 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon kosher salt
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon or cardamom
290-295 grams all-purpose flour
3-4 peaches and 3-4 purple or red plums, halved and pitted
1 tablespoon turbinado sugar

Center a rack in the oven and preheat the oven to 350°F. Butter an 8-inch square baking pan, dust the inside with flour, and tap out the excess.

Beat the butter at medium speed until it’s soft and creamy, about 3 minutes add the sugar, orange, and lemon zest, and beat for another 3 minutes — I don’t usually worry much about mixing times, but I paid closer attention here and did 3 minutes and 3 minutes here and I recommend it

Then add the eggs, one at a time, and beat for a minute after each egg goes in — Again, if you aren’t on a hurry, I’d recommend taking the full 9–10 minutes Dorie and Deb recommend to mix here

Still working on medium speed, beat in the oil and vanilla; the batter will look smooth and creamy, almost satiny

Sprinkle baking powder, salt, and cinnamon or cardamom over batter and beat well to combine, 20 seconds longer than seems necessary — I don’t know what “20 seconds longer than necessary” is, so I beat it for about another minute total

Add mix flour in with a spatula until just incorporated

Scrape the batter into the pan and smooth the top and arrange the peaches and plums cut side up in the batter — Depending on your plum size, you’ll be able to fit 12 or 15 halves on the top

Bake for about 35 to 45 minutes, or until the top is honey brown and puffed around the plums and a toothpick inserted into the cake between each plum comes out batter-free

Transfer the cake to a rack and cool for 15 minutes during which time the plums juices will seep back into the cake then run a knife around the sides of the pan to unmold the cake and the invert to cool right side up — Because the fruit is so juicy and this cake is so moist, I inverted it first on to a cutting board and then back on to my wire rack and then I left it on the wire rack, loosely tented with foil as we ate over 3 or so days

End of Summer Chopped Salad

Approximate quantities: 1 head of romaine lettuce, roughly chopped; 1 watermelon radish, thinly sliced; 2 large jersey tomatoes, roughly chopped; 3 medium carrots, sliced into thin disks; 1 medium lemon boy tomatoes, roughly chopped; 1 16-ounce can of chick peas, crisped one a sauté pan or in the oven; 6-8 pieces of halloumi cheese, crisped in a sauté pan with a sprinkle of chili and then drizzled with lemon juice, à la Nigella; 1 green pepper, thinly sliced; and 2 Kirby cucumbers, cut into thin disks drizzled with lemon juice, olive oil, salt, and pepper or tahini dressing

Serves 2 as a main.

End of Summer Veggies and Parmesan Salad

Approximate quantities: 1 head of butter lettuce, roughly chopped; 1/2 pint or about 16 sungold cherry tomatoes, halved; 2 carrots, sliced into thin disks; 6 radishes, sliced into thin disks; 2 Kirby cucumbers, sliced into thin disks; 8–10 artichokes hearts, halved or quartered; 15 or so ribbons of Parmesan cheese drizzled with olive oil, white wine vinegar, salt, and pepper

Serves 4 as a side.

End of Summer Veggies and Halloumi Salad

Approximate quantities: 1 head of red romaine lettuce, roughly chopped; 2 lemon boy tomatoes, roughly chopped; 3 Kirby cucumbers sliced into thin disks; 3 medium carrots, sliced into thin disks; 6 radishes, sliced into thin disks; 2 cubanelle peppers, thinly sliced; halloumi, grilled or crisped on a pan drizzled with lemon juice, olive oil, salt, and pepper

Serves 2 as a main.

Taco Salad

Approximate quantities: About 1/2 cup seasoned ground turkey, about a cup of cooked brown rice, and 1 14 ounce can of black beans, mixed together and warmed; 1 head of green lettuce, roughly chopped; kernels of 1–2 ears of grilled corn; 2–3 medium carrots, cut into thin disks; 2 grilled bell pepper, roughly chopped; 1 avocado, thinly sliced; 2–3 Kirby cucumbers, sliced into thin disks; 6 or so radishes sliced into thin disks; and 1/4 cup shredded cheddar cheese drizzled olive oil, the juice of 1 lime, and hot sauce

Serves 4 as a main.

Nancy’s Salad

I don’t know that I have ever actually faithfully followed this recipe. I make this salad a slightly different way every single time — in the fall and winter I use roasted red peppers instead of tomatoes, I’ve added artichokes, experimented with other Italian cheeses, omitted onions, made the vinaigrette, not made the vinaigrette, added cucumbers, carrots, and other things I’ve had on hand, and used dramatically less than 1/2 of pound of cheese and salami. Oh and I always crisp the chickpeas. None of this matters; it’s amazing every time. This salad as is or as a jumping off point is, obviously, a genius recipe.

Approximate quantities: 1 head of butter lettuce, roughly chopped; 1 large carrot, sliced into thin disks; 2 medium heirloom tomatoes, roughly chopped; 1 bell pepper, thinly sliced; 1 small red onion or spring onion; thinly sliced; 2 Kirby cucumbers, sliced into thin disks; 8 pepperocini, roughly chopped; equal amounts aged provolone and sopressata, julienned; and 1 16-ounce can of chickpeas, crisped in a skillet or on a sheet pan drizzled in olive oil, red or white wine vinegar, salt, pepper, and dried oregano

Serves two as a main.

Summer Chef Salad

Approximate quantities: 1 head of red romaine lettuce, roughly chopped; 1/2 pint yellow pear tomatoes, quartered; 2 medium carrots, sliced into thin disks; kernels of two ears of butter and sugar corn; 2 Kirby cucumbers, cut lengthwise cut lengthwise into thin spears, then into 1-inch segments; 1/4 of a head of purple cabbage, finely chopped; 3 jammy eggs, quartered; and 3 slices of ham, turkey, and Swiss cheese, layered, rolled, and sliced, drizzled with Brianna’s Buttermilk Ranch dressing

Serves two as a main.

An End-of-the-Week Odds and Ends Salad

Approximate quantites: 1 head of Green leaf lettuce, roughly chopped; 6–8 ounces, sugar snap peas, trimmed and cut lengthwise; 1/2 pint of heirloom cherry tomatoes, quartered; 4 small Kirby cucumbers, cut lengthwise cut lengthwise into thin spears, then into 1-inch segments; grilled green and wax beans; grilled red onions, roughly chopped; about 1/4 of a loaf of slightly stale fig-fennel bread, cubed, tossed with olive oil and salt, and crisped in a sauté pan, or grilled

Serves two as a main, four as a starter or side.