Shaun Smith is a writer, journalist and former chef in Toronto. He is the author of the young adult novel Snakes & Ladders.

As summer draws to a close, it is a marvelous time for cooking vegetables. Harvest crops such as corn and beets are coming in while many other veggies from earlier in the season are still plentiful. Inspired by the harvest this month, I talked to three authors with new cookbooks to get some really tasty recipes for cooking vegetables.

Chef Jeff Crump, co-author of Earth to Table, tells us how to make his wonderful heirloom beet salad with feta and pumpkin seeds.

New York Times food columnist Mark Bittman dipped into his new book, Kitchen Express, to serve up two classic recipes: one for cauliflower, the other for Brussels sprouts.

Chef Jean-Pierre Challet provides a simple and delicious corn soup from his book, One Pot French.

My own recipe this month is for an easy sauté that combines the earthiness of mushrooms and the slightly bitter flavour of Swiss chard.

Swiss chard with oyster mushrooms and shallots

Ingredients:

• One bunch Swiss chard (about 12 to 15 large stalks)
• 110 g/4 oz oyster mushrooms
• Two shallots, minced
• One teaspoon butter
• One teaspoon olive oil
• Two pinches of salt
• 10 turns of a black pepper mill

This dish goes wonderfully with any roast meat, especially chicken or pork, or can be a great vegetarian dish — especially if you do it as a gratinée.

I like to use oyster mushrooms for this recipe, but you can use just about any kind of mushrooms you like — just be sure to get them good and browned before adding the chard to the pot. If you don't have shallots, substitute half an onion, minced.

Slice the mushrooms lengthwise into strips about the width of your finger.

Meanwhile, in a large deep pot heat the butter and olive oil together over medium heat. When the butter foams, add the sliced mushrooms, minced shallots and two pinches of salt.

Reduce heat to medium-low and sauté for about 15 minutes or until the mushrooms are nicely browned, stirring often. At the same time, strip the Swiss chard's green leaves off their ribs. Wash the leaves twice in cold water to get rid of any sand. Chop them very roughly three or four times, and then once the mushrooms are good and brown, transfer the chard leaves to the sauté pot. Don't worry about any water still clinging to the chard, as this will help cook the leaves. If necessary, add a couple of ounces of water to encourage cooking and prevent any scorching.

Add 10 turns of a black pepper mill and sauté the chard, mushrooms and shallots together for another 15 minutes, turning often with a set of tongs, until all the chard is thoroughly wilted and cooked.

Transfer to a serving dish.

Optional: Before serving, transfer the sautéed chard and mushroom mixture to a baking dish and sprinkle with one cup of grated Swiss cheese, gruyere or sharp cheddar. Gratinée it under the broiler for seven to eight minutes.

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Jeff Crump's heirloom beet salad with feta and pumpkin seeds

Jeff Crump is the executive chef of Ontario's Ancaster Old Mill. (Random House Canada)(From Earth to Table: Seasonal Recipes from an Organic Farm by Jeff Crump and Bettina Schormann, Random House Canada.)

Jeff Crump wants you to get back to the land. "Grow your own," says the executive chef of Ontario's Ancaster Old Mill, "even if it's just a window box of herbs or a small patch of tomatoes."

I've asked him for tips on how ordinary people might get back to being more in touch with their food supply, especially vegetables.

"Simplify," he says. "Grow just one or two things. Then it becomes doable, and you'll feel good about it."

A few years ago, Crump's kitchen got back to the land in a big way, as is detailed in Earth to Table: Seasonal Recipes from an Organic Farm, the exquisite new cookbook he co-authored with Ancaster's pastry chef, Bettina Schormann. Since 2005, the Ancaster Old Mill has been buying a sizable quantity of its vegetables from a local organic farmer named Chris Krucker. And not only that: Crump, along with the small army of cooks in his kitchen, routinely spend time working on the farm in order to better understand where their ingredients come from. The new book, which lays out dozens of superb recipes that follow the growing seasons, is about that relationship.

Why do this? Why not just phone a restaurant supplier who'll deliver everything from dish soap to beef tenderloins? In part, it's because Crump opposes what he calls the "monoculture" of industrialized food.

"By monoculture," he says, "I mean taking food and looking at it like someone who might build cars, without any regard for tradition, history, flavour or social and environmental consequences — all these things that should be so important to our lives. If you plant a million strawberry plants and wipe the weeds out with pesticides and hire the cheapest form of labour and potentially involve genetic modification of the plants along the way, that's industrial monoculture. It's maximizing profit at the expense of everything else."

In short, Crump wants to know who is growing his food because for him, the quality of the food comes first. If it happens that those epicurean impulses dovetail nicely with environmental friendliness, well, all the better.

"This book is purely about what is best about food," he says. "We are foodies. That is the reason why we cook the way we do, and that is the reason for the book."

Crump's heirloom beet salad with feta and pumpkin seeds (recipe below) is a simple dish whose beauty lies in the unconventional cooking method for the beets and in the marriage of ingredients the home cook might not think to combine.

"Roasting beets and then slightly pickling them when they are hot is a really fresh, tangy way of cooking them," says Crump. "They are so full of flavour from the roasting."

Heirloom beet salad with feta and pumpkin seeds

Ingredients (serves four):

• Two bunches beets (about 4 lbs), mixed colours if possible
• ¾ cup extra-virgin olive oil, divided
• ½ tsp kosher salt
• Six tablespoons of sherry vinegar
• Two tablespoons local honey
• One shallot, thinly sliced
• 4 oz feta cheese, crumbled
• ½ cup packed arugula leaves
• ¼ cup toasted pumpkin seeds (see recipe, below)
• Salt and freshly cracked black pepper

Roasting the beets allows them to keep their color and all of their flavor. This is the only way to cook beets. Roasting the beets (rather than boiling them) allows them to keep their color and all of their flavor.

Preheat oven to 400 degrees Fahrenheit. Cut greens off beets, leaving about half an inch of stem. Scrub beets and toss with two tablespoons of the oil and salt. Place in a large roasting pan with one tablespoon of water. Cover tightly with foil and roast until beets are tender when pierced, about 40 minutes. (The roasting time will depend on the size and type of beet, so it's best to check them earlier.) Remove foil and let cool. Peel beets by slipping the skins off with your fingers. Slice beets into wedges and set aside.

In a medium bowl, combine the remaining oil, vinegar, honey and shallot. Stir in beets, cover and refrigerate for at least two hours or for up to 12 hours. Drain dressing from the beets and place them on a serving platter. Sprinkle with feta, arugula and pumpkin seeds. Season to taste with salt and pepper.

Toasted Pumpkin Seeds

Ingredients (makes 1.5 cups)

• 1 ½ cups green hulled pumpkin seeds
• One teaspoon extra-virgin olive oil
• ¼ teaspoon of kosher salt

In a large cast-iron skillet, toast pumpkin seeds over medium heat, stirring constantly, until puffed and slightly brown — about 10 minutes.

Drizzle with oil and sprinkle with salt, stirring to coat. Serve warm or at room temperature. (Make ahead: Store in an airtight container for up to three days.)

(Excerpted from Earth to Table: Seasonal Recipes from an Organic Farm by Jeff Crump and Bettina Schormann. Copyright © 2009 Jeff Crump. Photography copyright © 2009 Edward Pond. Published by Random House Canada. Reproduced by arrangement with the publisher. All rights reserved.)

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Mark Bittman's seared cauliflower with olives and breadcrumbs and broiled Brussels sprouts with hazelnuts

Mark Bittman writes for the New York Times. (From Kitchen Express: 404 inspired seasonal dishes you can make in 20 minutes or less by Mark Bittman, Simon & Schuster Canada.)

Simplicity is key in Mark Bittman's new book, Kitchen Express. The slender and highly approachable volume was born of his famous New York Times food column, The Minimalist, which he has been writing for almost 13 years.

"The story behind it," says Bittman over the phone from New York, "is that my editor and I were trying to come up with something new and interesting and exciting for the column, and we said, why not do 101 ideas for picnics?"

The enormous popularity of that article led them to do several other 101 stories. The new book, says Bittman, was inspired by those columns, featuring as it does 101 recipes for each of the four calendar seasons.

The recipes themselves are presented in an unusual prose-like format and written in a crisp yet inviting conversational tone (see two of them below) that makes it seem as though they would be almost effortless to complete.

But don't think Bittman doesn't take his cooking — and most especially his vegetables — seriously.

Bittman encourages consumers to eat less meat in his book Food Matters: A Guide to Conscious Eating.

"The other book I published this year is called Food Matters: A Guide to Conscious Eating," he says, "which takes a look at the intersection between global warming, obesity, animal rights and the over-consumption and over-production of meat and other animal products."

The book, which includes more than 75 recipes, takes a hard look at the diet of North America and concludes that if we all ate a lot less meat, not only would we be healthier but so would the planet.

"It is an interesting intersection between individual health and planetary health," says Bittman. "It is clear that North Americans eat entirely too much in the way of animal products. People need to embrace their inner vegetable lover."

Thankfully, his two delicious recipes below will help you do just that.

"These are great, simple ways to prepare not only these vegetables but other vegetables as well," says Mark Bittman. "They'd each work as a pasta sauce or a gratin or as a side dish. They're model recipes for how to do vegetables in simple ways."

Seared cauliflower with olives and breadcrumbs

To make this more substantial, start the recipe by frying a sausage or two (or a couple of chunked chicken thighs) in the pan first; break the meat into chunks as it cooks.

Core and roughly chop a head of cauliflower. Heat a film of olive oil in a large skillet over high heat and cook the cauliflower undisturbed until it browns a little and begins to soften. Add a tablespoon of minced garlic and a handful of pitted olives; cook and stir for a couple of minutes until the dish comes together and gets fragrant, adding a few more drops of oil to the pan as needed. Add fresh breadcrumbs and keep stirring until they're toasted. Taste and sprinkle with salt if needed, lots of black pepper and some chopped parsley. Serve hot or at room temperature with lemon wedges.

Broiled Brussels sprouts with hazelnuts

For something meatier, fry up a couple of slices of bacon or some diced pancetta and add it along with the hazelnuts.

Heat the broiler. Trim about a pound of Brussels sprouts and pulse in a food processor — or use a knife — to chop them up a bit. Spread out on a rimmed baking sheet, drizzle with two tablespoons olive oil, sprinkle with salt and pepper and toss. Broil the sprouts for about five minutes until they begin browning on the edges. Meanwhile, pulse a handful of hazelnuts (or chop them). Shake the pan to flip the sprouts; add the nuts and broil for another three minutes. Sprinkle with freshly squeezed lemon juice and plenty of fresh parsley.

(Excerpted from Kitchen Express by Mark Bittman. Copyright © 2009 Mark Bittman. Reprinted by permission of Simon & Schuster Canada. All rights reserved.)

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Jean-Pierre Challet's crème de maïs - corn soup

Jean-Pierre Challet is the catering chef at A Taste of Quebec. (From One Pot French: More Than 100 Easy, Authentic Recipes, by Jean-Pierre Challet, McArthur & Company / Madison Press Books.)

French cuisine has a reputation for heaviness. But Jean-Pierre Challet — who hails originally from Lyons, France, and is now catering chef at the Toronto specialty food shop A Taste of Quebec — shows us in his new book, One Pot French, that that reputation may be something of a myth.

"In Canada, people often think that French food is heavy food," Chef Challet says over the phone form his kitchen. "For me, French food is not heavy when it is done properly."

Challet's delightful new book shows us how to enjoy all that France has to offer in a surprisingly diverse variety of very simple recipes all of which employ only a single cooking vessel — be that a pot, frying pan or pastry sheet.

Are the French well known for one-pot cooking?

"Oh yes," says Challet. "This is very traditional cooking, with a touch of creativity and modern approach. The recipes are very easy for people to do at home. Not enough people cook at home anymore. I wanted to do a book with recipes that are very easy and don't take a long time to prepare."

Challet's delicious corn soup recipe below is a lighter version of a traditional corn-and-cream soup from Brest, in Brittany — one of the only places in France, he explains, where corn is eaten.

"It is very unusual in France to use corn to feed people," he laughs. "Usually, it is for the chickens and pigs and cows." But then, he adds, the quality of corn in Canada is far superior to that of France. "The peaches and cream corn we have here is beautiful," he says, "sweet and perfect."

Challet lightens the recipe by using milk instead of cream. He recommends getting a good, crusty baguette or sour dough loaf to dip into the soup.

Crème de maïs - corn soup

Ingredients (serves 4)

• Four sweet corn cobs
• One leek, white part only
• Four cups/one litre cold milk
• Half of a sweet onion, chopped
• One bunch thyme
• One sprig cilantro
• Salt and pepper
• Chives or your favourite herb, finely chopped for garnish

Remove and discard the husks and silks from the corn cobs. Roughly cut the corn from each cob, and place the kernels and cobs in a large stockpot. Add the milk, onion, thyme and cilantro; simmer for 15 minutes.

Add the leek, season with salt and pepper and cook for another five minutes. Remove the cobs and discard. Purée the remaining ingredients, strain and adjust seasoning.

Ladle the soup into warmed bowls. Sprinkle chopped chives or your favourite herb on top.

(From One Pot French - More Than 100 Easy, Authentic Recipes by Jean-Pierre Challet with Jennifer Decorte. Copyright © 2009 McArthur & Company / Madison Press Books. Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.)