OPB’s “Superabundant” explores the stories behind the foods of the Pacific Northwest with videos, articles and this weekly newsletter. To keep you sated between episodes, Heather Arndt Anderson, a Portland-based culinary historian, food writer and ecologist, highlights different aspects of the region’s food ecosystem. This week she offers a recipe for a buttery tomato tart with herbed ricotta cheese.

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Between the back-to-school energy or the cooler evenings, it’s definitely feeling like summer is coming to a close — but not before we gorge ourselves on mountains of tomatoes. We are in the prime of tomato season, and seeing their myriad jeweled tones of vermilion, orange, yellow, purple-black and even streaked in psychedelic rainbow stripes makes us wish summer could hang on just a little longer. Whether or not you like tomatoes, you can’t deny that they do make a lot of things taste better — a French fry just isn’t the same without ketchup. What chemical compound gives tomatoes this culinary superpower? Read on to find out!

Labor Day, #PSL turns 20, Oktoberfest and good things in gardens and markets

Freshly picked morsels from the Pacific Northwest food universe:

Solidarity forever

Labor Day isn’t just the unofficial end of summer, it’s a day to honor those who fight for fair wages, workplace safety, and work-life balance. The Northwest has long been a stronghold of the labor movement, as exemplified by the women’s fruit cannery strike at the Oregon Packing Co. in 1913. The International Workers of the World (or IWW, aka the Wobblies) came to show their support, the mayor stepped in, and Portland doctor Marie Equi, who lived openly as a lesbian and staunchly supported labor rights, stabbed a police officer with her hat pin and declared herself an anarchist. Read about the strike in the Portland Mercury and watch the Marie Equi episode of Oregon Experience.

Pumpkin spice latte turns 20

Love it or hate it, as of a week ago, Starbucks’ pumpkin spice latte (PSL) season is upon us for the 20th time, and with it, the tired, sexist tropes about what kind of person enjoys the beverage. Though we broadly support using little treats as basic self-care, we tend to prefer those particular spices in other stuff, like chai, apple cider or on actual pumpkins.

Zigge zagge zigge zagge hoi hoi hoi

Beer and brat fans, dust off your trachten and mark your calendars: Mt. Angel’s Oktoberfest celebration (the Northwest’s largest Oktoberfest) is coming soon, Sept. 14-17. Most of the events are free to attend, but you’ll have to pay for your food and drinks.

In the “Superabundant” garden this week

It seems like our Instagram feed is just a wall of braggy “look at all my tomatoes!” posts, and while we applaud and congratulate all you successful tomato growers, our garden has been just a slow trickle of sungolds and San Marzanos. (Petty jealousy aside, this week’s recipe is a celebration of tomato season.) The brown turkey figs are back on, after a few fits and starts with last month’s breba crop. Blackberries are still slowly making their way out of the garden and into salads and yogurt. In the next day or two we will be buried in hobak summer squash.

The ripe elderberries are all beginning to drop, so we’ll harvest a few quarts for making throat-soothing syrup for winter. We’re also collecting the parsley and calendula seed to sow after end-of-season garden cleanup.

We harvested a ton of chiles this week, which we’ll ferment into hot sauce, and now that our nukadoko has begun fermenting we can start shoving cucumbers into the rice bran bed (to try your hand at traditional Japanese nukazuke, here is a very straightforward guide).

Good things in markets

It always seems like we see the best summer produce as the season is winding down, and this year is no exception. There are tomatoes galore right now, and tomatoes’ sheathed cousins, ground cherries and tomatillos, are looking plump and lovely. It is peak pepper and sweet corn season, local melons are still glorious, and blackberries are sweet, fragrant and juicy. We’re seeing lots of gorgeous figs of every stripe — black missions, brown turkeys and Lattarulla all have superior flavor.

Local albacore is a really good price right now — if you haven’t already, now is a good time to learn how to pressure-can your own for superior Niçoise salads, tuna melts and tuna casseroles.

Recipe: Tomato tart with herbed ricotta

With tomatoes at their umami-sweet peak, we’re cramming them into everything from scrambled eggs to pasta dishes, but if you want a show-stopper there’s nothing better than a tomato tart. The natural glutamic acid in tomatoes — nature’s MSG — brings out the best in creamy ricotta, fragrant summer herbs and buttery pastry. (About that: homemade pastry is wonderful, but holy smokes, does store-bought puff pastry make life easier. It has a beautiful light and flaky texture and pretty much anything you put in or on it will look much fancier than it actually is.) This gorgeous dish is as suited to a late-summer party as it is to the weeknight dinner table. Served with a green salad, this is a perfect light lunch or supper. Serves 4-6.

Note: If you have an extra hour, you can definitely make your own ricotta — it’s basically just hot milk coagulated with lemon juice or citric acid (if you use lemon juice, whip the zest into the finished ricotta for added flavor). Save the strained whey for baking or stash it in the freezer for later use.

Ingredients

2 cups whole milk ricotta

2 large eggs

¼ cup finely chopped fresh herbs such as parsley, basil, thyme and/or summer savory plus more for garnish

1 12″ x 15″ sheet frozen puff pastry, thawed

1 lb fresh, ripe tomatoes, thinly sliced (preferably a variety)

Olive oil for drizzling

Flaky sea salt and freshly ground black pepper

Instructions

1. Preheat the oven to 375 degrees and line a 9″ x 12″ half sheet pan or rimmed baking sheet with parchment.
2. In a medium-sized bowl, whip the ricotta, a generous pinch of salt and one of the eggs together until creamy, then fold in the herbs.
3. Lay the puff pastry into the prepared sheet pan and gently press it into place, making sure there’s about a ½ inch rim of pastry to contain the ricotta mix without oozing out. Stab a few holes in the center of the pastry with a fork, then beat the other egg and brush it on the edges of the pastry.
4. Spoon the ricotta mix evenly onto the pastry, then layer on the sliced tomatoes. Drizzle the tomatoes with olive oil and bake until the pastry is golden brown, about 25-30 minutes. (Don’t be alarmed if the filling appears to puff up too — it’ll deflate when it cools.)
5. Transfer the baked tart to a cooling rack and leave it to cool for 10-15 minutes. Sprinkle the finished tart with sea salt, pepper and more herbs, then serve.

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