Cream of Broccoli Soup

I have committed to consuming a big box of fresh and local vegetables every two weeks. Sometimes, that's the easiest way to think about my CSA deal. It being August, there's an awful lot of broccoli showing up at my door, and since the temperatures have been hovering somewhere nearer to 70 than 100 lately, the idea of soup didn't seem so bad, all of a sudden. It being summer, and as you can see in this picture, I also chopped up some small tomatoes with basil and drizzled oil and vinegar over the top.

Mark Bittman, and his How to Cook Everything cookbook, suggested a Cream of Broccoli Soup that sounded just fine to me - and it was both simple and delicious. He notes that it works with lots of vegetables - carrots, cauliflower, celery... you know, the standard "Cream of ___ Soup" options.

If you do include rice, as I did, be sure to puree it pretty thoroughly - otherwise you get sort of distracting rice bits in each spoonful. This is an excellent candidate for the immersion blender - it removes the entire "transfer to a blender without burning yourself, blend the hot soup, wash the pan, put the puree back in the pan and heat without boiling" portion of the event.

I made half a recipe, but I'm including the full recipe here.

Cream of Broccoli Soup

adapted from How to Cook Everything

Serves 4

1 lb broccoli, trimmed and cut up (I peeled and sliced the stalks to include, too). 1 pound of broccoli is about 4 loosely packed cups.

1/2 medium onion, chopped

1 Tbsp butter

1/2 cup rice or 1 medium baking potato, peeled and cut into quarters

4 cups chicken, beef, or vegetable stock, or water

salt and pepper to taste

1/4 to 1 cup heavy or light cream or half-and-half

minced fresh parsley leaves or chives for garnish

Chop up the broccoli and set aside. Chop up the onion and cook it at a low temperature in the butter for a few minutes, or until softened. Add the broccoli and cook for a few minutes. Add the rice and stock and turn the heat to medium-high. Bring to a boil, then lower the heat to medium and cook until the vegetables are very tender, about 15 minutes.

Cool slightly, then puree in a food mill or a blender. Return to the pot and reheat over medium-low heat. Season with salt and pepper, add the cream. Heat through again, garnish and serve.

Salads are Healthy

There's this idea that most salads are healthy. I have to admit, though, that I usually find the most delicious salads to be the ones that involve things like... steak, or blue cheese, or hard-boiled eggs, or all of the above. Those salads, however, would be just put to shame if placed in a healthy salads contest with the one I just made and ate. It was delicious, but boy-oh-boy, it was primarily healthy. If that's what you're looking for, this might be just the thing.

My grand CSA adventure continues this summer, and this recipe - Lebanese Chard & Bean Salad - was provided by the newsletter writers at Driftless Organics. They have this delightful habit of sharing recipes that include (and help to use up) some of the vegetables in the accompanying CSA veggie box. This is one of those recipes. I have no idea if this is truly a Lebanese recipe or not, but I can confirm that it's a healthy salad that looks nice and tastes good.

By the way, take a look at these Dragon Tongue Beans. They are so pretty. Once cooked, they lose their nifty purple detailing (which the CSA newsletter warned me about), so I took a picture of them prepped but pre-cooked.

Lebanese Chard & Bean Salad

4 cups chard (I used some greens - arugula and purple mizuna)

1 cup green, purple or dragon tongue beans, cut into thirds

1/2 medium onion, finely sliced

1/3 cup plain yogurt

1 Tbsp fresh lemon juice

1 Tbsp fresh parsley, chopped

1/2 cup walnuts, coarsely chopped and toasted (I got lazy and didn't include these)

1/2 cup sweet peppers, very thinly sliced

Steam chard for a minute or two, until just wilted. Run under cold water to cool & drain. Arrange it on a serving platter. Steam beans for a couple of minutes, cool, drain, & place on top of wilted greens. Arrange onion & sweet pepper slices on top of beans. Mix yogurt, lemon juice and parsley together in a small bowl and drizzle over salad. Top with walnuts and extra parsley for garnish. Add toasted pita wedges for a complete meal!

Shepherd's Pie

Sometimes, when the wind is blowing at record breaking speeds, darkness is setting in before you leave work, and a long winter lies ahead, you just want to eat something comforting. Furthermore, you want to eat it soonish, and with very little effort involved. Boy, do I have the recipe for you! In October of 2007, this Easy Shepherd's Pie recipe caught my attention, and it was just exactly what I found myself wanting to eat this week.

I got Real Simple magazine for a couple of years, until their suggestions started to feel familiar and the recipes I had flagged in them were piling up. I decided, at that point, not to resubscribe. But I certainly flip back through the old issues, and I recently found that you can find recipes very easily on their website - in this case, I knew what I was looking for, I just wasn't sure which old issue I would find it in. You can do searches by keywords or ingredients or cuisines or all variety of other options.

Here it is - the shamelessly modernized and Americanized version of what I imagine to be a centuries old tradition... probably involving meat scraps and whatever else was lying around! This version requires mostly things I have on hand, and a few things I can purchase with ease if I must. It takes 10 minutes to cook the beef and preheat the oven, 10 minutes to bake. Read beyond the recipe for my tips related to speeding up the mashed potato element of this recipe.

Easy Shepherd's Pie

Real Simple, October 2007

Heat the oven to 400.

Brown 1 lb ground beef.

Stir in 1/3 cup ketchup and 1 tsp Worcestershire sauce.

Add 8 oz of mixed frozen vegetables (carrots, peas, corn, green beans - whatever - thawed).

Cook one minute.

Put in a baking dish.

Mix 1 lb of mashed potatoes with 1/4 cup cheddar (cheese is optional).

Spread potatoes on top of beef and vegetables.

Bake 10 minutes.

Enjoy!

In my case, I realized on Tuesday that I wanted to eat Shepherd's Pie, but I was unwilling to leave the house for ingredients. I looked up the recipe, moved a variety of frozen vegetables into the refrigerator to get a start on thawing, and I made a huge batch of mashed potatoes for dinner (with chicken and carrots, because I had those on hand, but that's a story for another time). If I'd had ground beef in the freezer, I would have shifted that over to thawing mode, as well. But I didn't, so I started a grocery list, instead.

Tonight after work I stopped for ground beef, came home, threw the recipe together, and I'm eating it now, while I write this post!

Here's my note about mashed potatoes. Real Simple suggests that you buy a 1 lb bin of pre-made mashed potatoes from the grocery store. I did that once, just out of curiosity, and they were actually quite good, and did eliminate the need to make mashed potatoes. However, if the goal is to make this recipe quickly, I solved that problem this time by making the potatoes in advance, so the shepherd's pie took less than 30 minutes to make. Also, mashed potatoes are incredibly easy. Here's roughly how Rachel Ray suggests doing it, in her Get Togethers cookbook:

Mashed Potatoes

Peel and cut into chunks, 1 pound of potatoes (2 large potatoes).

Place them in a pot, covered with water. Cover the pot, bring to a boil, and lightly salt. Leave uncovered and simmer at a rolling boil until tender, 8-10 minutes.

Drain the potatoes, and return them to the hot pan. Mash them with half-and-half, butter, cream, milk, roasted garlic, Boursin cheese, or whatever else you like.

I used a generous splash of half-and-half, a few tablespoons of butter, salt and freshly ground pepper. I had cooked three or four large handfuls of tiny potatoes, which I did not peel, as I know they were grown organically and their peel is therefore very good for me, and not at all chemical-ridden as some peel may very well be (mine are from our well stocked CSA box potato supply!).

Curried Eggplant and Potatoes

I received some nice curry powder as a gift some time ago, and I've been meaning to use it. Recently, I got some nice potatoes from my CSA, and a nice eggplant from a friend's garden, and I thought that this recipe might be just the thing. Then it turned out that there isn't actually any curry powder in this recipe. I made it anyway.

I often invite people over for dinner, but just as often, I cook for myself. I halve most recipes (you've probably noticed that on here), and then I usually have leftovers for at least one lunch, and sometimes I freeze leftovers for another time. I really enjoy cooking, and it's nice to make dinner decisions based on what I feel like eating, and what I have around the kitchen. But every once in a while, and this was one of those times, I wonder midway into the effort just why I'm trying so hard. Let me explain.

When I was peeling the potatoes for this recipe, I clipped my finger tip slightly - nothing serious, not even any blood, but it stung quite a bit, and it certainly slowed down my momentum. I wrapped up my finger with a bandage to protect it from the food (and the food from it, for that matter), and forged ahead. I measured all the spices, and peeled and minced the ginger, and peeled and sliced the garlic, and salted the eggplant and cubed the potatoes. I began to cook the spices, took a picture (for this very blog post), turned around, and the pan of spices had burned right into a solid, smoking, black disk.

I turned off the heat, nursed my finger, scooped out the burned disk of spices, and washed the pan - burning my hand slightly when some hot oil spattered. At this point, my momentum pretty much halted. I looked around at the sliced and salted eggplant, which had been resting for two hours, at the potatoes that I had hurt myself preparing, and at the can of tomatoes I had already opened. I tipped up my chin, put the pan back on the stove, and began measuring out the spices again, peeling and slicing more garlic, and peeling and mincing more ginger. I proceeded carefully, monitored temperatures closely, and everything came together as it was meant to. At 10:30, I sat down with a bowl of curried eggplant and potatoes and thought, "It's really a shame that there's nobody else to enjoy this." The next day I invited a friend over for dinner, told her the story, and served the leftovers on rice. She confirmed my findings - this recipe is delicious.

Lest you be scared off - it's actually quite simple, too. Keep your fingertips in while you peel, and monitor those temperatures when you initially heat the spices in the oil. It's smooth sailing from there! I halved this recipe, but wish that I hadn't - it would freeze nicely, and I could eat it many times before tiring of it! Here's the recipe in full.

Curried Eggplant and Potatoes

from How to Cook Everything by Mark Bittman

Serves 6

2 medium-to-large eggplants

salt

1 Tbsp canola oil

1 tsp mustard seeds

1/2 tsp cayenne

1/2 tsp ground turmeric

2 tsp ground coriander

1 tsp ground cumin

1 Tbsp peeled and minced fresh ginger

2 Tbsp sliced garlic

4 Tbsp butter

3 large tomatoes, cored, peeled, seeded, and chopped (canned are fine, don't bother to drain)

3 large potatoes, any kind, peeled and cut into 1/2 inch cubes

freshly ground black pepper to taste

about 1 cup water, or more if needed

2 Tbsp freshly squeezed lime juice

minced cilantro leaves for garnish

Peel the eggplant if the skin is thick or the eggplant is less than perfectly firm. Cut it into 1/2 inch cubes and salt if it you like. (I did - just sprinkle salt generously over each side of the eggplant and let it sit in a colander for at least half an hour. Rinse and squeeze dry between paper towels before using.)

Combine the oil and mustard seeds in a large deep skillet. Turn the heat to medium and cook until the seeds begin to pop, about 2 minutes. Add the remaining spices, the ginger, the garlic, and the butter and cook, stirring occasionally, until the ginger and garlic soften, about 5 minutes.

Add the tomatoes, potatoes, eggplant, salt, and pepper, and about a cup of water. Turn the heat to medium-low and cover; cook, stirring once or twice, for about 30 minutes.

Remove the cover and turn the heat to medium; add more water if the mixture is dry. Cook, stirring occasionally, until both the eggplant and potatoes are very tender, about 15 minutes longer. Stir in the lime juice and adjust the seasoning to your taste. Garnish and serve.

Sweet Pepper Soup

I made this soup last summer, truly enjoyed it, and then I totally forgot about it. When my CSA box recently arrived with a generous number of sweet peppers, the bright colors set off some kind of bell in my head, and I felt an urgent need to locate this recipe and make the soup again! I found it, happily, in my Moosewood Restaurant Cooks at Home cookbook, which is one of my favorites. This soup is delicious and can be made very quickly. It's not terribly filling, so I recommend serving it for dinner with a cheese quesadilla and salad, or eating it with a sandwich for lunch, or something along those lines.

Sweet Peppers Soup

Serves 4 (However, I halve this recipe and it works fine, and fed me for three meals)

2 cups chopped onion

1 Tbsp butter or vegetable oil

6 cups chopped red and green bell peppers (about 6 peppers)

1 tsp ground cumin

1 tsp ground coriander

1/4 tsp cayenne

2 cups water or vegetable stock (I used chicken stock)

1 cup sour cream (plain yogurt works, too)

2 Tbsp fresh lemon juice

fresh chopped cilantro

In a covered soup pot, saute the onions on medium heat in the butter or oil for about 3 minutes, until barely softened. Add the bell peppers and spices and cook, covered, until just soft, stirring occasionally. In a blender or food processor (I use my immersion blender), whirl the cooked onions and peppers with the the water or stock and sour cream. Don't over process - small pieces of pepper should remain. Add salt and pepper to taste. Garnish with cilantro and crumbled tortilla chips, if you wish.

Variation: omit the cumin, coriander, and cayenne. Add 1/3 cup chopped fresh dill when you are blending the ingredients together. Serve with croutons, if you wish.

Fresh Corn Pesto!

I am the very lucky recipient of a gift subscription to bon appetit, courtesy of my generous and lovely sister! The August issue featured lots of recipes for creative uses of corn, tomatoes, and zucchini. Some seemed a little too creative (Tomato Tarte Tatin, for example, which involves sugar, vanilla, and puff pastry)... and some a little too labor intensive (like the Shaved Zucchini Salad, which requires turning two pounds of zucchini into ribbons with a vegetable peeler)... but the Fresh Corn Pesto looked reasonably straightforward, I had fresh corn on hand from the CSA box, bacon was on the ingredient list, and the recommended vehicle for the recipe was pasta. I figured I couldn't really go wrong. Besides, my immersion blender (also courtesy of Elspeth) has an attachment that is just perfect for any pesto-like creations.

Happily, my bowl of Fresh Corn Pesto, served on pasta, looked nearly identical to what is pictured in the magazine - and tasted delicious, too! I took the leftovers for lunch the next day and they heated up in the microwave just fine.

Tagliatelle with Fresh Corn Pesto (serves 6)

* I cut the recipe in half, and served it on fettucine.

4 bacon slices, cut lengthwise in half, then crosswise into 1/2-inch pieces

4 cups fresh corn kernels (cut from about 6 large ears)

1 large garlic clove, minced

1 1/4 tsp coarse kosher salt

3/4 tsp freshly ground black pepper

1/2 cup freshly grated Parmesan cheese plus extra for serving

1/3 cup pine nuts, toasted

1/3 cup extra-virgin olive oil

8 ounces tagliatelle or fettucine

3/4 cup coarsely torn fresh basil leaves, divided

Cook bacon in large skillet over medium heat until crisp and brown, stirring often. Using slotted spoon, transfer to paper towels to drain. Pour off all but 1 Tbsp drippings from skillet. Add corn, garlic, salt and pepper to drippings in skillet. Saute over medium high heat until corn is tender but not brown, about 4 minutes. Transfer 1 1/2 cups corn kernels to small bowl and reserve. Scrape remaining corn mixture into processor. Add 1/2 cup Parmesan and pine nuts. With machine running, add olive oil through feed tube and blend until pesto is almost smooth. Set pesto aside.

Cook pasta in large pot of boiling salted water until just tender but still firm to bite, stirring occasionally. Drain, reserving 1 1/2 cups pasta cooking liquid. Return pasta to pot. Add corn pesto, reserved corn kernels, and 1/2 cup basil leaves. Toss pasta mixture over medium heat until warmed through, adding reserved pasta cooking liquid by 1/4 cupfuls to thin to desired consistency, 2 to 3 miutes. Season to taste with salt and pepper.

Transfer pasta to large shallow bowl. Sprinkle with remaining 1/4 cup basil leaves and reserved bacon. Serve pasta, passing additional grated Parmesan alongside.

Garlic Scape Pesto

I must start with an apology. This recipe is out of season, and you will not be able to find even one garlic scape again until June, which is nearly a year from now. But when you do - when you see them, in all their twisty, curly, fabulous glory, perhaps you'll remember that you DO know what to do with them, and that a quick visit back to this blog post will remind you. Or, if you are tremendously well organized, you could print this all out now, and save it in your "recipes to try in June 2011" folder. In the case that you have such a system in place.

Last year, there were garlic scapes in my CSA box. I must admit that I found them later in the summer (maybe around now, even, late August or so), all sad and dead and smushy on the bottom of my vegetable drawer. This year, when the garlic scapes arrived, I benefited from (believe it or not) my somewhat recent affiliation with the world of twitter. That's a separate topic entirely, but for our purposes let's just say that twitter is an online service that allows people to quickly and easily share information with one another. And in this case, it allowed the bloggers over at Serious Eats to share this brilliant blog post with me, in very timely fashion:The Crisper Whisperer: Seven Things to do with Garlic Scapes.

I was intrigued by the concept of garlic scape pesto, particularly when it was presented with such enthusiasm: Far and away my favorite use for garlic scapes is pesto, either straight-up or mixed with herbs like basil and dill. Pesto showcases raw scapes in all their glory.

I stuck to the recipe very precisely, and I followed her suggestion to freeze it in small batches, to enjoy through the winter... but it's so delicious that I have already used one of the frozen rations.So far, I've been eating it on cheese tortellini, and that has worked out quite well.

Garlic Scape Pesto

Blend together:

1/4 cup toasted pine nuts

3/4 cups coarsely chopped garlic scapes (or 1/2 and 1/2 with basil or dill)

juice and zest of 1/2 lemon

1/2 tsp salt

freshly ground pepper

Blend into that mixture:

1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil

Mix with a generous amount of freshly grated parmesan and stir directly into hot pasta. I divided this batch into four smaller batches, and froze three of them. Keep in mind that the parmesan should be added as you stir it into the hot pasta - which is to say that it shouldn't be mixed into the pesto before freezing.

Coleslaw

In my experience, coleslaw is often kind of soggy, dripping in mayonnaise. Sometimes it is even sweet, which, to me, seems kind of inappropriate for cabbage and carrots. Well, as the CSA has a habit of doing, it motivated me to take a nice fresh look at these ideas, because, frankly, I have cabbage and carrots coming out my ears.

Happily, Vegetable Love came through in the nick of time, providing a fresh dressing with a bite, which just barely skims across the surface of the many crispy bits of vegetables that it resides with in the bowl so nicely. I made this recipe earlier this summer, and just realized that I was actually craving it again! Round two has come out just as delightfully as round one, did.

Here's the recipe, halved, with my edits and alterations. I find this to be plenty of coleslaw for one person to consume without getting tired of it, but if you were attending a big picnic, I'd at least double it back to the original recipe (vegetable mix AND dressing).

Crisp Slaw (the recipe name is ever so appropriate here!)

Mix together:

green or red cabbage, cored and finely shredded (about 2 cups)

1 Tbsp salt

1/2 medium red onion, thinly sliced

1-3 carrots, peeled and grated (about 1/2 cup)

Combine and add:

1 Tbsp cider vinegar

1/4 cup mayonnaise

1 tsp sugar

1 tsp salt

freshly ground black pepper, to taste

1/4 tsp celery seeds

1/8 tsp mustard seeds

Refrigerate for at least an hour before serving - the leftovers get more flavorful with time, and the salad lasts just fine up to about a week.

Epic Sandwich

I am fortunate to live in a metro area which has a Trader Joe's. We actually have a couple of them here, and one is quite close to where I live. To be honest, what really draws me to Trader Joe's is the fact that they sell Cabot Cheddar, and at a reasonable price. However, once I'm there, I often make good discoveries - this time, in addition to my beloved cheddar, I got a package of San Francisco salami, and a loaf of french bread.

When I got home, and realized that the salami, the bread, the cheese, and the ripe tomato on my counter would make one heck of a sandwich, things really got rolling. As I was assembling things, I grabbed some fresh basil that had recently arrived in my CSA box, added a layer of brown mustard, and sliced up a banana pepper (also from the CSA box). I had some leftover goat cheese in the refrigerator (fresh, from a local farm, purchased at the Seward Co-op), so I added that, too. And then I remembered that when I visited France more than ten years ago, the sandwiches that looked rather like this (and were available at any corner shop for a quick lunch), often had sliced hard boiled egg on them, which was delicious. So I boiled up some eggs (also from the Co-op, and completely unaffected by recent egg recalls), and sliced those up for the sandwich, as well.

It was epic. I encourage you to make a sandwich similar to this one, as soon as possible.

CSA Discovery: Edamame

Yet again, the CSA box was full of delightful vegetables - and in this case, a watermelon, too. This is just my share of the box, which is to say that we actually received twice the bounty that you see pictured here. In a somewhat clockwise description, there is, pictured above: sweet corn, watermelon, cucumber, broccoli, shallot, basil, carrots, kale, beets, sweet peppers, a banana pepper, and a bag of edamame.

I have eaten edamame, but only at sushi restaurants. In fact, this is one of my favorite parts of going out to sushi - receiving the steamy dish of salty green pods, with a sort of fuzz on them (kind of like on a kiwi, but less threatening). You grab onto one with your teeth, and haul the little pea-sized soy bean deal out of the pod. It's delicious.

So, it was a pleasant surprise for me to discover that edamame grows in Wisconsin, and preparing the above mentioned dish is maybe the easiest thing, ever. I rinsed the pods, tossed them into an inch of boiling salted water, cooked them for 5 minutes, rinsed them in cold water, dumped sea salt over the top, and ate them. They tasted just like at a restaurant, but fresher, which was probably because they had literally been picked within 24 hours of me eating them.

Kohlrabi Potato Gratin, Oh My!

I mentioned already that the fabulous people of Driftless Organics include a newsletter with each CSA box, but I may not have outlined the contents of said newsletter. The first box of the year included a kind of welcome letter, along with a helpful feature on how to flatten the nifty wax coated boxes the veggies come in so that they can be re-used. There is also a brief description of each vegetable included, along with some quick suggestions about how to store them, how to prepare them, or what to match them up with (you know – eat the arugula in five days or less; store the potatoes in a cool dark space; use the green garlic as you would any garlic, but more generously, as it is quite mild). And, last but certainly not least, there is always a recipe or two to help with the most challenging vegetables in the box. This time, that recipe was for the kohlrabi (and also the potatoes and green garlic). I halved it, and discovered that it made a good companion to the meatloaf I made. Matched up with some of my homemade dressing on spinach, I had quite a meal! (If you are noticing that the dressing and the meatloaf are from over a week ago, you're on to me. I wrote this post and forgot to.. well.. post it.)

Kohlrabi Potato Gratin

(serves 3-4 people)

3-4 medium potatoes, whole, unpeeled

2 medium kohlrabi bulbs, whole, peeled

green leaves from the kohlrabi bulbs, stems removed

1 cup green garlic (white and green parts), rinsed well and coarsely chopped

1 cup half & half

2/3 cup shredded/crumbled cheese (I used blue cheese - yum!)

1/2 tsp each of salt, pepper, and nutmeg

2 Tbsp butter

1/4 cup bread crumbs

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

In medium saucepan with lid, boil whole potatoes and the peeled, whole kohlrabi bulbs for 7-8 minutes, until tender but not soft. Drain into a colander.

Chiffonade de-stemmed kohlrabi leaves (make a pile of flat leaves, roll them up into a log, and slice thinly) and place into the potato/kohlrabi pan with about an inch of fresh water. Bring to boil with the lid and steam for about 2 minutes. Drain.

Cut potatoes and kohlrabi bulbs in half the long way and slice thinly.

Mix together the chopped green garlic, half & half, and the cheese, along with the salt, pepper, and nutmeg.

Put butter in an oven safe pan and place in the hot oven for a couple minutes. Remove and swirl the melted butter to coat. Put half of the potato and kohlrabi slices in the bottom of the pan, lying flat. Spoon 1/3 of the seasoned cream and cheese mixture. Top with another layer of veggies and another layer of cream and cheese. Repeat. Sprinkle with bread crumbs, cover with tin foil, and bake for 20 minutes. Remove foil and bake another 20 minutes, until brown on top and bubbly on the edges. Let sit for about 10 minutes before serving.

The First CSA Box of the Season!

Well, I can't begin to say how excited I am about this first CSA box from Driftless Organics! I shared a CSA box with a friend last year, and it went so well that we're doing it again!!

This particular farm actually includes a newsletter with each box, along with some relevant recipes for the more unique vegetables that are included (this time the recipe is for Kohlrabi Potato Gratin). Also, this time, they offered a cookbook that appears to be most excellent - I wasn't clever enough to buy one, but my friend did, so I took a picture! Rather than having you compare the vegetables on the table to the vegetable list in the newsletter, I'll help you along. I think that they go like this, from left to right: top row: blue potatoes and red radishes; second row: arugula, spinach, and red butterhead lettuce; bottom row: german butterball potatoes, purple kohlrabi, more spinach, green garlic, purple scallions, and garlic chives!!

More posts to come, once I start to use these lovely vegetables. Boxes arrive every other Thursday, well into October.

Fresh Tomatillo Salsa

I noticed the other day that tomatillos are currently available in my produce section. If you are not familiar with this fruit (that seems like it'd be a vegetable), I encourage you to learn more. They look like green tomatoes in a paper wrapping, and my Vegetable Love cookbook describes them as having "a delicious combination of sweetness and mild acidity" which seems as accurate as any description I might come up with here. It reminded me of some awesome homemade salsa that I made last summer when my CSA provided me with a generous number of tomatillos.

This salsa, which could be made very easily any time fresh tomatillos are available, tastes like summertime has come alive in your mouth. I highly recommend it. It is from the aforementioned Vegetable Love cookbook:

Fresh Tomatillo Salsa

2 medium cloves garlic, smashed and peeled

1 small jalapeno pepper, seeded and deribbed

4 medium sized tomatillos, husks removed, rinsed well, cored and coarsely chopped

2 scallions, trimmed and cut into 2-inch lengths

2 Tbsp chopped cilantro

1 Tbsp fresh lime juice

1 tsp kosher salt

freshly ground black pepper to taste

Place garlic and jalapeno in a food processor and chop very fine (I used my hand held one, and it worked great). Add the tomatillos and scallions and process until finely chopped but not pureed.

Transfer the mixture into a bowl and stir in 1/3 cup water and the remaining ingredients. Allow to stand 30 minutes, then adjust the seasoning and serve. Makes 1 1/2 cups.

Dreaming of Vegetables

More specifically, I should say that it was ever so nice to have fresh vegetables, straight off the farm, in my kitchen all summer. I highly recommend joining a CSA, especially if their late September deliveries are as spectacular as this one was, from Driftless Organics:

Romanesco?!

As I have mentioned before, I am participating in a CSA this summer. That stands for "Community Supported Agriculture" and essentially means that I paid a farm (Driftless Organics, to be specific) this spring so that every other week, from June well into fall, they would box up some veggies for me to enjoy. The vegetables are delicious, it is hard to keep up with them, and the whole effort is a great exercise in remembering that vegetables grow in the ground and depend on the weather. The carrots look arthritic, the tomatoes got blight and died after just one round of picking, and the arugula just keeps coming - every vegetable (and melon) that I've received, however, has tasted absolutely divine.... and then came the romanesco.

In the lovely newsletter that we (my friend Lara and I - we share the veggie boxes and it's STILL hard to keep up!) receive with each box, there is a nice note from the farmers, a helpful glossary of sorts to explain what's in the box, and a few relevant recipes. Here's an excerpt of what the romanesco description says this week: "Broccoli's good, but Romanesco is stunning. I've actually had people say they couldn't eat it because it's too beautiful. This Italian heirloom cooks up and tastes more like cauliflower than broccoli. I like to steam it whole in water with lemon juice or broth & then serve it quartered." Have a look for yourself - beautiful, right?!

Life without a Microwave

When I recently began life in a new kitchen, Elspeth encouraged me to not get a microwave. I believe her reasons were (in no particular order) - saves space, saves energy, and saves living beings such as myself from any future discoveries that microwaves were zapping us full of bad.. um, micro..waves.

Happily, between my trusty stovetop, my trusty oven, and my trusty toaster oven - leftovers can usually get heated up quite easily. When push comes to shove, I also take leftovers to work for lunch quite a bit - where I heat them up in a microwave. However, on days like today, the absence of a microwave pushes me to make a new and improved meal out of what might otherwise have been a sad cold (or microwaved) pile of yesterday's meal.

My CSA (the meat one, not the veggie one) tends to provide meat that is packaged and labeled, just like at the grocery store - but with very specific labels... not so much about the cut of meat as what they think you should be doing with it. Last round, I ended up with "kabob beef" and this time, I ended up with "fajita beef" - so, fajitas it was. Beef (with salt, pepper, some lime juice, and some soy sauce on it), an onion, and a red bell pepper, tossed about in the cast iron pan (my favorite kitchen item!)... wrapped up in a tortilla, and tada.

Okay - so that brings us to this evening, with the leftover fajita business, staring up at me from the bottom shelf of my refrigerator. Kinda hard to heat up in the absence of a microwave, and I'm a real advocate for finishing up leftovers before they go bad and need to get thrown out. Soooo... I thought about it, and realized that what I really wanted to eat was a quesadilla. Guess what chopped up fajita fillings make? Awesome quesadilla fillings! I heated up the chopped up bits, stuck them between two tortillas (you guessed it, in the cast iron pan) with some cheddar cheese and chopped up jalapenos.... and, honestly? This meal was better than the first.

Take that, sad microwaved leftovers. Take that.

Cooking Local!

Not to be outdone by Elspeth, I figured I better post something right away. I must start by saying that it is about 90 degrees out (really), and torrential rain just started. I am warm (very warm) and dry inside, enjoying this Angelique Kidjo album (Oyaya! - that's the name of it, punctuation and all). But, to get back to the point: my CSA began this week, and I have already made two meals with the fresh veggies that I obtained approximately 24 hours ago. I fear that I will not keep up this prompt veggies into meals turn around for the remaining 18 weeks of the CSA, but we shall see. Might as well document this effort to keep me motivated come August.

So, the CSA (Community Sustained Agriculture, for those of you not in the know) is from Driftless Organics, in southwestern Wisconsin (their blog is in our "highly recommended" list on the bottom right corner of this site). Yesterday, splitting my half-share with a friend, I came home with: arugula, mint, Butterhead lettuce, spinach, purple kohlrabi, green garlic, green onions, and broccoli. Please note that nearly all of these vegetables fall into "best when eaten straight out of the field, must be eaten within 3 days" category. That's a whole lotta salad.

Last night at 10pm I found myself on the phone with Elspeth, getting directions for the arugula pasta that she posted about earlier today - I did her clever "get it ready at work" lunch version, and it was all she promised it would be and more. This evening, faced with what is still a very full vegetable drawer of fresh things, I sat down with my "How to Cook Everything" cookbook by Mark Bittman, and hoped for the best. Lo and behold, a stir fry recipe surfaced that called for a couple of CSA ingredients, some standard stuff I've got in the fridge, and an "uncured fresh ham steak" - which I just happen (oddly enough) to have in my freezer from a recent trip to the Seward Co-op. So... I gathered up the ingredients, arranged them artfully, took a photo, and then proceeded to cook my dinner. Please note the inclusion of green garlic (on the cutting board), green onion (in the small dish) and spinach (in the colander)... three more CSA veggies, down for the count!

It turned out to be delicious, and believe it or not, this was my first time cooking rice, ever. It is really easy to do - who would've guessed? If you would like to make the whole production, here is the recipe as I interpret it:

*Slice thinly one pound of pork (tenderloin, fresh ham, loin, or shoulder). Cut the slices into inch-long pieces that might be considered bite-size.

*Prepare the following: one pound of spinach, coursely chopped; 1.5 Tbsp of minced garlic (or 3 Tbsp of chopped green garlic); 1/2 cup chopped scallions.

*Heat a big, serious-looking pan. I used a cast iron skillet. Put in 1 Tbsp of vegetable or peanut oil, and the pork. Push it around for a few minutes until it looks cooked. Take out the pork.

*Add another Tbsp of oil to the pan, stir the garlic in for 15 seconds, dump the spinach in, stir it around for a minute.

*Return the pork to the pan, and dump in 1 Tbsp soy sauce and the juice of 1/2 a lime.

*Shut off the heat, put it in a bowl, top it with the scallions, and eat it with rice.