Tag Archives: CSA

Cooking techniques, Farm Box, Food, Recipes

CSA: Week eight, summer classics

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(Missed week 7 since I got a double box for the lake…)

-4 ears of sweet corn
-1 bunch basil
-1/2 pound assorted cherry tomatoes
-1 pound beets
-1 japanese eggplant
-1 very small round watermelon, lots of seeds

I don’t believe in messing around with freshly picked sweet corn and cherry tomatoes. There’s a reason cooking gets easy in the late summer, and it’s because you’re better off not doing anything to those ingredients beyond a light dressing or quick boil (for the corn).

I haven’t run into too much, um, organic life in all this organic produce this summer, but it turns out the corn has been fairly riddled with caterpillars. I shucked the first couple ears with no problem but when I started on the third a really, really large caterpillar reared up at me, I shrieked and dropped the ear in the bag of husks, and he fell off before I could take a photo.

I have very strong memories of eating fresh “butter and sugar” sweet corn at my grandmother’s house in Western Massachusetts when I was little. The Williams’ Farm was across the street, and once the water was on the stove getting ready to boil we would go across and pick as much as we needed, leave money in a can, then shuck it and get it straight in the water. It’s important to eat corn on the cob as soon as possible after it’s picked, because the sugar in it starts converting to starch as soon as it is off the plant. When the corn is super-fresh you barely need to cook it; I think I boiled ours for about four minutes, tops. Remember: Don’t salt the water you cook corn in, it will toughen the kernels. Lots of butter, salt and pepper are crucial, too.

Beautiful:

Not quite as beautiful:

A much smaller Little Friend, found in an ear from the next week:

The fourth ear was similarly afflicted, so I broke off the ends of those two and we each had a little more than an ear and a half to go along with our tomato salad and a little fish fillet leftover from Ben’s Trader Joe’s fish and chips over the weekend.

BTW, here’s the lovely inside of that darling little watermelon:

Family, Farm Box, Food, Recipes, Travel

Birthdays by the Lake

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Let’s wrap up this vacation before I leave on my next trip, shall we?

Thursday was Ben’s Birthday!! And it was a big one, though he’s not happy about that. Happy birthday, honey–I love you times 30. (Not that Ben reads this blog. I can write anything I want about him and he’ll never know. His coworkers might, though.)

Our friend Kiki and her kids (they have a house one lake over) joined us for dinner. We grilled sausages and I made sauteed peppers and onions, greek pasta salad, braised baby fennel (…meh) and Ben’s favorite lemon-chocolate tart.

Pasta salad ingredients:

(we were blessed with a decent grocery store a few minutes away–next time we needn’t bring NEARLY as much stuff with us!)


(No finished shot, oops!)

Gorgeous spring onions from the farm:

Colorful:

Fennel–I was improvising and I didn’t get it quite right. Cut up the the bulbs:

Browned them in the pan I’d cooked the peppers/onions in, with a bit of broth to deglaze:

Then roasted in the oven (covered, mostly) for a while. I dunno, they were boring and not quite right. Not like the time I did the ones from the Molly Stevens Braising book.

I spent a while Thursday morning hiding in the kitchen and secretly making Ben’s favorite dessert, the Lemon Chocolate Tart from Sunday Suppers at Lucques. He asks for it all the time, so I thought it would be a good birthday surprise (and I’m really sick of making it now, so that’s it for a while!). It turned out to be the best one yet–I was using a thinner pan than normal to make the curd, which cooked faster than I’m used to, but I think I’d been undercooking it a little because the flavor and texture were better this time.

I got fancy birthday candles before we left, but when it came time to put them into the tart I ran into trouble: They were so tall and the tart is so shallow that while Greta and I (laughing hysterically) got them to stand up while we lit them, the minute I started to move the thing they all started tipping over and dripping wax on my hands, etc.

We blew them out in a hurry and I fished out the little old-school candle holders I’d bought at the grocery store that day. Those were able to stick through into the crust and stayed up a bit better. And the burn on my hand is all healed now.

The next day was MY birthday (and no, I was not turning a special age). Greta made Sausage Balls for breakfast. MMMmmm:

I had awkwardly insisted on cooking dinner that night, because I was holding a secret: Our friends Ann and Chris (the ones we and Chris/Greta went to the lake with last Memorial Day) were going to drive over from Ann’s parents’ place on Friday afternoon to join us for the day. We’d been planning it for ages, and I wanted it to be a surprise for everybody. And despite being tempted to admit the plan, I kept the secret and Chris and Ann wandered down the path from the house while we were all out in the lake after a slow start to the day. It was a wonderful moment, and everyone was so happy. Yay!

They stayed for dinner and I made what I SHOULD have made for Ben’s birthday dinner–the famous Triple Pork burgers, also from Sunday Suppers. Another thing he asks for all the time and that I don’t make often!

But that’s boring, since I’ve shown photos of making them several times already. Here are Ann, Jack and Greta, chilling out:

And the boys, acting ridiculous (yes, they tipped over within a minute of this photo being taken):

Oh, food? Well, it’s certainly easier making the pork burgers with fresh mexican chorizo (as the recipe calls for) instead of the hard spanish stuff I’d had to use previously.

Greta and I had a fairly hilarious time making fresh mayo (eventually aioli to spread on the burger rolls). She’d only made larger quantities, in a cuisinart, and I’d never made it. We did eventually figure it out, though it was tricky with the equipment on hand. Worth it, though, and I’ll be trying again soon.

Poor Ben had some struggles cooking the burgers over a charcoal fire, since he’s used to propane, but once we peeled off the scorched bit (they had the cheese on too early, per the directions, so he couldn’t flip them to keep the cooking even) they were extremely tasty:

We also had another take on the german potato salad I served with the tuna the week before (I added sugar to the dressing this time for some reason: not necessary) and local corn on the cob:

And then after dinner greta slipped away and when she came back it was with freshly baked cornmeal shortcakes covered in strawberries and whipped cream (blended with leftover lemon curd from the tart–SO good)! I was delighted:

And that was that. We packed up and left the next morning–another lake trip over. I can’t wait for next year.

I can’t be too sad, though: In a stroke of Best Husband Ever, Ben got me a ticket to go visit Bridget in London as my birthday gift. And I leave THURSDAY NIGHT!!!! OMG.

Cooking, Farm Box, Food, Life in the Big Woods, Travel

Lakeside eats (and silliness)

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Ok, vacation. Greta and I spent some time before the trip working on a google doc (brilliant) spreadsheet to plan the meals we’d each cook and what groceries we were each bringing. I hadn’t thought of using google docs and it was perfect–I highly recommend them if you’re working on anything like an address list or planning document that a couple people might edit.

Anyway.

We each had a few dinners to plan, plus lunches. For breakfasts we all just had english muffins or cereal, though Greta made her famous sausage balls on my birthday!

Happy times, the lake…


Night one: Kate
I brought vegetables from the CSA–small cavolo nero leaves I had blanched ahead of time, as well as a couple summer squash. I also brought cheese, etc. Greta brought dough, since she makes pizza every friday night. The dough rested at her feet during the 9 hour (lots of stops!) trip up to the lake (Ben and I were glad to have traded the 6 hour drive from NY for the 2 hour drive from Boston), and it was a little odd to work with but tasted fine.

(This one also has basil from my happy plant on the porch!)

We had a big salad, as well.

Night two: Greta
Greta made sirloin tips (marinated in Soy Joy), cous cous and roasted asparagus. I was in charge of getting the charcoal grill going–Dad would be proud of my chimney-use skills, though we never quite mastered cooking on charcoal instead of gas!

It’s important to keep your strength up at the lake, since the days are packed with strenuous activity:

Best Lunch Ever

Ok, fine, we didn’t have the baby for lunch, but doesn’t he look edible with his cabbage leaf hat? That day we actually had grilled hotdogs and cabbage slaw, and it was awesome. (The first full day we were all swimming when we got hungry, and Chris had brought beers down to the lake so we maybe had a beer or two before lunch (yikes) (it was late!) and I tipsily made sandwiches, then put them in a ziplock bag and paddled them out to everyone, floating in floaty-chairs and the canoe out on the lake! Whee!)

Dinner three: Greta

Pork tenderloin in a dried cranberry/red wine reduction, with roasted potatoes.
Delicious. Tender and tangy and luscious. She’s something, that Greta.



Wait, maybe THIS was the Best Lunch Ever

The next day we had a whole extra tenderloin all cooked, and Greta had the brilliant idea to make BBQ pork sandwiches. We got onion rolls and barbecue sauce and OMG SO GOOD.

The boys had gone out sailing and ran into some problems, so we ate around 1:30 and they ate around…4:30? At which point I had another little snack, too.

Night four: Joint effort

We were supposed to eat halibut and other lovely things for dinner, but shockingly no one was really in the mood after the heavy, late lunches. Greta (a veritable font of brilliance) suggested breakfast for dinner, and broke out one of the FOUR 1-pound packages of bacon she’d brought. Ben made blueberry pancakes. I made mimosas. We ate around the coffee table around 9:30.

Um, the four of us ate the entire pound of bacon.

Wednesday we rented an old-school pontoon boat for the day, and rolled like old people in total floating living room comfort. The guys really enjoyed being outside:

Jack was impressed when we went back to the house for panini and salad dockside at lunchtime:

And we all swam a lot:

We ate dinner that night early, at a restaurant in town. Everyone was tired, but Jack and Greta were able to play cards for a while:

While Chris kicked back:


To be continued, with back-to-back birthday dinners…

Cooking techniques, Farm Box, Food

Summer perfection

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Some nights I really don’t feel like cooking but I crave a real dinner. Before we left for vacation I was also overrun with cucumbers from the farm share, and while I was talking to my mom one evening she suggested using them in a sort of salsa to put with fish. I am nothing if not obedient (HA), so I put a package of frozen tuna (Trader Joe’s) in the fridge to thaw overnight, and the next night I made just what my mom told me to make.

The salad for the fish used up a couple cucumbers as well as a spring onion from the farm box. I supplemented it with a local hothouse tomato and some feta cheese.

I cut the onion into very fine pieces–spring onions are sweet and mild but I still don’t like a big crunchy chunk of raw onion!

I mixed the vegetables with a bit of oil and salt (I can’t remember now, but I think I also added a splash of cider vinegar) and let them sit while I prepped the rest of dinner.

I made a cheater’s knockoff of german potato salad as another side: Boiled red potatoes in salted until they were tender, and while the boiled I added in a couple peeled cloves of garlic. When the potatoes were done I drained them and returned them to the pot, covered, to “pull themselves together,” as my mom says. I mashed up the garlic cloves and mixed them with oil and cider vinegar and salt and pepper to make a tangy dressing. (Mom says 1 to 1; I’m not sure quite what this was because I didn’t make enough, so I kept adding splashes of one or the other as I added the potatoes). Instead of being organized and cutting up the potatoes, then pouring over the dressing, I cut up one smoking hot potato at a time and added it into the bowl with the dressing, trying to get some dressing on each piece. My fingers were unamused. Like I said, I also kept having to add more oil and vinegar towards the end because I’d made too little dressing. It looked like a total mess at the end but it was delicious.

Meanwhile the vegetables had gotten nice and juicy (I cut feta into tiny pieces and added it in before serving):

When Ben got home he grilled the fish according to the instructions on the package, and we were ready to eat 10 minutes later:

This was seriously tasty. And actually, the leftovers were so good that I did an embarrassing happy dance in my seat in the work cafe the next day and everyone looked at me like I had three heads. Whatever, they were just jealous.

Cooking techniques, Farm Box, Food, Recipes, Travel

CSA: Week six, Risotto allo spazzacamino

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No Week 5 CSA box–since I was going to Oregon I had a friend from work pick it up.

Before vacation I picked up two half shares (which is not equal to a whole share, since there are different veggies for each), because we were about to head off to the lake for the week and I wanted to prep as much as possible to take with us.

The goods (Double quantities):
-2 bunches spring onions
-2 bunches cavolo nero (black kale)
-3 eggplants (two long purple; one white–these died a tragic lakeside fridge death, ie. they got abandoned all week in the back of the overstuffed fridge. Eek!)
-4 baby fennel bulbs
-1 pound string beans
-800 more cucumbers (1.5 pounds? 2 pounds?)

When I saw cavolo nero tucked in with the stuff in the Chard box I grabbed it immediately, remembering a variety of delicious things made with the stuff when I was last in Italy with my family. Sure enough, I got home and went to the journal entry for a big dinner we had at Le Lance, a restaurant in Fiezole outside of Florence, and found that Ben’s primi course was a “Risotto allo spazzacamino” with cavolo nero, gorgonzola and cannellini beans.

Some google work turned up a variety of cavolo nero/cannellini combos in Tuscan cooking, and I decided to take advantage of the oddly cool weather to reproduce the risotto in question.

It turns out “spazzacamino” means chimney sweep–I seem to remember Ben’s risotto at the restaurant being colored dark green/black by the kale, though that didn’t happen in mine, and I wonder if that is where the name comes from? (On a side note, there is a gelato flavor called Spazzacamino, which contains finely ground espresso beans and scotch. Wow.) Many of the recipes I found with that in the name contain truffles, though I did find a risotto with the cavolo nero and black beans (no mention of gorgonzola).

ANYWAY, I went with what I’d written down. I cleaned the kale and found that the first bunch was still all attached to the stems:

Which meant there was a variety of leaf sizes–I was, of course, charmed by the tiny ones:

I set aside all the smallish ones to blanch for pizza at the lake, and chopped up the rest of that bunch for the risotto. I also rinsed the beans and, um, opened a container of crumbled gorgonzola from Whole Foods. Sigh. I was at the small one! Options were limited! I still have a lot of this left, even after pizza-making too.

I cooked the risotto about halfway before adding in the cavolo nero. Next time I will put it in right at the beginning, as soon as I’ve put in the first round of broth. I think in the one Ben had the kale had dissolved into it more, blackening the rice. I added the beans almost at the very end, so they just heated up, and stirred in gorgonzola once it was finished. I sprinkled a little on top, too, but next time I’ll leave that off.

Verdict: Tasty but needs tweaking. Kale first, next time!

As a special bonus, when I was flipping through the trip notes I found one of my food sketches, detailing the filling in a series of ridiculously good sandwiches at a foccaceria where we ate lunch a couple times. These are spring fillings but don’t they make you want a foccacia sandwich?

Cooking techniques, Farm Box, Food

That loathsome mandoline

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Ugh.

Ok, so I had pounds of zucchini to use up and I’d been planning on a very veg-heavy absorption pasta, but then I saw a variety of posts the web about boiled pasta with zucchini and I gave in to the always gorgeous photos at Smitten Kitten and went with a julienned zucchini spaghetti.

First of all, don’t be fooled by how nice all this julienned zucchini looks:

While the results are better than if I’d cut by hand, the mental anguish was far greater. I have the STUPIDEST OXO Mandoline, with a clunky finger guard that I ended up having to use because it was so hard to force the zucchini through the julienne blade that I was sure I’d slice off a finger if I didn’t use the guard. UGH, the whole thing is bulky and awkward and the only part I like is how the legs fold out. It’s easy to twiddle the dial to adjust the thickness, but nearly impossible to pull out the piece that lets you either thoroughly wash the flat blade or flip it around to get wavy cuts. Argh.

Look at what the finger guard does to the vegetables:

That is a much smaller leftover piece than usual, because I was tempting fate and not really using it as directed at that point. The one time I tried to use this for onions about half of each onion was unusable. Grr.

Anyway, I wish instead of looking at Smitten Kitchen’s photos, I had actually read her recipe. I was in a coma and cooking without paying attention and I ended up not using any garlic or….anything that would give this flavor. Bleck. It was so boring. Had I read her directions or used a lick of common sense I would have cooked garlic in olive oil and then tossed the pasta/zucchini in THAT. Instead I just tossed olive oil over the pasta and zucchini, gave it a stir, and ate it alone while nursing my mandoline-wounded feelings in front of the TV while Ben was at band rehearsal. Tragic.

It was the first time I used some of my basil, though. That was a bright spot.

Happier times ahead: Since I was home for the weekend there is lovely Oregon Food Porn to come.

Cooking techniques, Farm Box, Food

CSA: Week four, beating back the beets

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When I picked up the CSA share last week I found myself facing a replay of the previous two weeks:

-1 head lettuce
-1 bunch beets
-1.5 pounds summer squash/zucchini
-1.5 pounds cucumbers
-1 bunch chard
-1 bunch sage

Sadly I had fallen a bit behind and still had beets from two weeks before languishing in the produce drawer, along with zucchini from one week before (we hadn’t eaten at home much). Eek! Time to do some processing.

I was on the phone with my mom and we looked up ways of cooking the beets without using the oven, because it was wickedly hot and humid out. She found instructions for microwaving them, and I decided to go against every instinct I possess and give it a shot. All I did was scrub the beets and cut off the greens about an inch up from the root, then put them in a pyrex baking pan (I have a smallish square one) and covered it tightly with saran wrap. I cooked them for ten minutes, then pulled out the little beets that felt tender and gave the big ones another ten. I then allowed them to cool far too much before I put on gloves and peeled them, which meant I was sweating profusely while clutching my cellphone to my ear with my shoulder and desperately trying to finagle the skins off (note: peel beets as soon as you can handle them without burning yourself; don’t let them cool). To top off this vision of grace and loveliness, I was wearing my ratty around-the-house clothes with a pair of 3.5 inch silver wedges that I’m breaking in for a wedding this weekend. Thank god I was home alone… Anyway, the beets looked like hell but tasted just fine.

I’d have to do a side-by-side test to see if the flavor is more concentrated in the oven, but honestly these tasted great dressed in a vinaigrette as a side dish.

After I had recovered from the traumatic beet peeling endeavor, I hauled out my mandoline (slicer, not instrument), and cut up about half of the zucchini and summer squash into 1/4 inch ribbons, which I tossed with olive oil, salt and pepper:

Ben grilled steak and the zucchini and we ate outside, desperate for a breeze:

Still to come: Dull zucchini spaghetti and my mandoline rage

Cooking techniques, Farm Box, Food

CSA: Week three, still feeling green

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The third week (two weeks ago, ahem) injected a trace of color in with the greens:

-1 head romaine lettuce
-1 bunch collard greens
-4 small cucumbers
-2 zucchini
-2 summer squash
-1 kohlrabi
-1 bunch thyme
-1 bunch scallions

Have you guys cooked collard greens? I’m a Northern girl; I’d never encountered them before. They are HUGE–check out the bunch filling the entire drainer:

I didn’t feel like boiling them in a classic “mess o’ greens,” nd I didn’t have a ham hock or anything on hand for flavoring, so I looked up how to sauté them instead. I washed and cut up the greens:

And then boiled them in salted water for 15 minutes or so.

I drained them and pressed the water out:

And then sautéed them with garlic and olive oil until they tasted good. (How specific!)

With a good amount of salt and pepper, they made a nice side dish with sausage and funny O-shaped pasta from Trader Joe’s:

I must say I prefer kale or chard, though.

Cooking techniques, Farm Box, Food

Scapes!

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Scape scape scape. It’s like a typo. I keep typing “ramps,” but that’s….not what these are.

Scapes are the tops of young garlic plants. From what I’ve read, they are trimmed off to encourage the plant to put energy into the bulb, rather than the flower. They have a mild flavor, slightly garlicky but more like a dense scallion.

When Tom stayed over the night before he went back to Oregon, we finally used my bag of scapes in a couscous to accompany some Korean-Style steak from Trader Joe’s. I chopped them up, which is time-consuming since they all curl different which-ways, so you have to do one or two at a time:

I sautéed them in peanut oil over medium-high heat until they were tender (this takes a while!)

Meanwhile, I cooked the couscous, which was even bigger than pearl/Israeli couscous, and appeared to be hand rolled. I bought it at Christina’s spice shop in Inman Square, in an unmarked plastic bag.

It had an interesting texture–slightly chewy, slightly grainy, in a good way. It almost felt like there was semolina in it, or something?

When it was cooked I sautéed it with the scapes for a few minutes, trying to get a nice browned exterior on some of the pearls. That didn’t really work; they just stuck–I have to stop trying to do it, but the image in my head is such a tasty one! It was still pretty good:

I had Tom slice up the baby zucchinis from the CSA into ribbons, and he grilled those (coated in olive oil, of course!) and the steak. I won’t buy that pre-seasoned steak again; the texture was great but the marinade was too sweet for me. Still, this dinner came together very fast and was quite delicious! And in real life it wasn’t blurry. Sigh.

UGH. On an unrelated note I just noticed that all of my photos that were posted at Shutterfly are now showing up as tiny thumbnails in my blog archives. I went and looked and they changed their systems–looks like if I update the image source links I’m ok, but otherwise it only shows a thumbnail. Annooooying.

Cooking techniques, Family, Farm Box, Food, Recipes

CSA: Week two, fun with chard

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Aaaand once again I’m a week late.

Week two CSA contents:

-1 bunch chard (green)
-3 medium red beets
-1 head lettuce
-4 oz. garlic scapes
-8 oz. summer squash/zucchini
-1 bunch dill

Tuesday night I stopped at Whole Foods after the CSA pick-up and grabbed the makings for a semi-homemade pizza. They sell bags of fresh dough, all ready to bake. I also got some mozzarella and a couple tablespoons of an artichoke-garlic spread from the antipasto bar. (I find that there are frequently useful little things in those!)

At home I spent ages washing greens, then I cut up:

…and sautéed the chard and set it aside. I rolled out the dough and brushed it with olive oil, then smeared the artichoke dip around and put on the cheese, lovingly grated by Ben. (“It. is. sticking. Why is it clumpy? Why?”–it was a humid night and even putting the cheese in the freezer to firm up didn’t do the trick.)

I baked that (on the highest heat below broil; somewhere north of 500 degrees) until the cheese started to bubble, then pulled it out and added the chard, and baked until it seemed done. Precise, no?

All in all it probably took about 10 minutes longer than throwing a frozen pizza in the oven and it was *delicious.* I will likely be doing this a lot this summer, and experimenting with grilling them as well.

We finished with a salad made from the lovely tender lettuce. For some reason the head this week had loads of little baby lettuces (clones? mutants? they were delicious so I don’t care) clustered around the base:

Eee! Tiny tiny lettuces! Adorable. *Munch* We both commented on how tender and delicious the lettuce was, eaten within 24 hours of harvest! And not to be all philosophical, but there’s something appealing to me about washing mud off the lettuce because the farm was hit by the same thunderstorms that hit us here, too.

Coming soon: Cooking scapes with Tom!