CSA Week #8

The chapter in which we break Ed with zucchini.

Over the years we've lived and cooked together, Ed and I have greatly expanded each other's palettes. I would say my greatest success was in getting Ed to try zucchini, cooked in various ways other than just "unidentifiable overcooked tasteless green mush." Turns out it can be good. In the last few weeks, we've had it shredded and fried in patties, breaded and baked into coins, sliced into zoodles, chunked and fried as a side dish, and cooked into veggies stews. I would even argue that zucchini has been delicious in all the various forms that we've eaten it, and Ed has gone from tolerating the vegetable (technically a fruit) to actually enjoying it.

But by Tuesday night, we had chomped our way through the week's CSA and were down to a zucchini and a jar of pesto. I was all excited about a pasta dish with zucchini rounds and a pesto sauce, and Ed simply couldn't do it. He couldn't eat a single bite more of zucchini. I'll give it to him, he tried. And failed.

It's ok, he didn't go hungry, since there are other things to eat in this world. And I do think the zucchini problem was compounded by our landlords dropping off a couple huge monsters at our door that they'd grown in the garden. The bonus zucchinis were pretty hard to use up.

Anyway, we're on to a new week, with a new batch of zucchs, and I choose the little ones, because those are tasty, and will happily eat them all, chunked and fried, for lunches, if Ed doesn't want any for dinner.

Week #8

8 ears of corn
1 bunch collards
1 bunch kale
1 purple cabbage
1 bunch cilantro
2.5lb tomatoes
2.5lb cucumbers
1.5lb zucchinis
1.5lb carrots
1.5lb beets

We're moving up the glycemic index now! Look at those gorgeous little candy beets and sweet carrots! I'm pretty excited about this one, all sorts of my favorite things. There were two types of cucumbers, the ones with the thin skin (my preference), and the ones with the thicker skin and more warts, good for pickling. I mostly got the thin-skinned variety, because I think those taste better raw.

First up was a super quick dinner salad for Thursday night. Ed was off to VT, to meet up with John to go on an adventure, but first needed to do some last-minute truck maintenance so that it would work better, so as he did that I made a quick batch of corny corn muffins, and a salad of chopped cucumbers, tomatoes, parsley, sliced raw beets, sliced red onion, chickpeas, lemon, salt, and olive oil. Tasty stuff, and it was all done just as Ed came back in, so he could wolf down a quick dinner before leaving.




The corny corn muffins were very corny, because I may have double the amount of corn called for in the recipe, and used two ears and half the recipe. I used the recipe from Bon Appetit, with the only changes being that I left out the sugar, replaced milk with water (because we had no milk), and left out the bonus egg yolk. While the recipe tasted fine, it was a pain in the butt to make, with weird random quantities and things like "one egg yolk," which would leave you with one egg white. I'll stick with the KAF basic muffin recipe, or the cornbread recipe on the back of the package, and just add fresh corn kernels, next time.

Other dishes - Toast with a salsa of cherry tomatoes, husk cherries, fresh young raw purple onions, chives and lime juice. Served over some shredded mackerel mixed with lemon and parsley, on top of a sourdough toast. And, because I'd thought we'd need more food, but we didn't, a side of lentils, cooked with lots of chicken stock, an onion, garlic, some tomato paste, and some mexican chili paste, which adds amazing flavor. That chili paste has vanilla, coffee, and like fifteen kinds of peppers. Gift from our friend Neil when he was in Mexico - he came home with the stuff and told us "I don't know what to do with this, but I bet you do, here you go!"



The salsa was really good. Again, those young red onions are amazing. Now they're all gone. The husk cherries also worked really well in the salsa, a hit of sweet and sour amongst the tomatoes.


And because there's no use making pickles if you aren't going to eat them, a couple refrigerator dill pickles to go along. And a watermelon gin & tonic, because it was that sort of Wednesday.

The pesto zucchini pasta dish. Quite delicious, actually. The trick here is to reserve some of the starchy pasta water, to thin out the pesto.

Our flowers from last weekend and even the week before are still going strong. So pretty!

Ottolenghi-inspired burnt aubergine

We had one eggplant left, and I figured, why not try one of those recipes from the Ottolenghi cookbook that we haven't tried before? There is one in there that essentially broils the crap out of an eggplant and mixed with fresher flavors, and that's what I wanted. Here's the original recipe, ish:

https://thehappyfoodie.co.uk/recipes/burnt-aubergine-with-yellow-pepper-and-red-onion

I have to say, true to typical-Alex-form, I didn't manage to follow the recipe for very long. But, our version was totally inspired by Ottolenghi's!

One of the things this salad relied on was one of those amazingly sweet little red onions. I don't know if you could do it with those big supermarket red onions, but I hear that soaking the cut onions in cold water can take away some of the bite of a fresh onion. The little fresh guys we got don't need that. It's amazing. I can't stop raving about these onions.

The interesting thing is that the eggplant sort of disappears into the dish, just adding some smoky flavor and a little bit of thickening texture to the dressing. So good. Definitely my newest favorite way to eat eggplant.

Broiled eggplant with herb oil
1 eggplant
1 small red onion
~1C cherry tomatoes, halved
~1/2C fresh parsley, chopped roughly
~1/2C fresh basil, chopped roughly
~1/4C fresh oregano
~1tsp cumin seeds
~1/2tsp red pepper flakes
~2-4tbs olive oil
Juice of half a lemon
Several pinches of salt

Line a baking pan with tin foil (this step is unnecessary if your baking pans are clean enough. Mine are so well "seasoned" that you'll get a lot of smoke if you don't cover up the seasoned bits...), and broil your eggplant until it's soft and the skin is burned and cracked, turning a few times. I think it took us about 15 minutes, turning it every 5.

Cut the tomatoes in half, deposit in a big bowl. Cut the onion in half, then each half in half lengthwise, and slice into little quarter-rings. Add to the boil. Salt, lemon juice in the bowl.

Pour a hefty couple glugs of olive oil into a small pan. Add the cumin seeds and red pepper flakes, and heat that until it smells awesome. Then add in the fresh herbs, and stir those around for maybe a minute, taking the pan off the heat. The idea is that you're flavoring the oil, not cooking the herbs.

As you're doing that, scrape the eggplant innards out of it's burned and cracked skin. Chop roughly and add to the bowl; season with some salt, mix with the tomatoes and onions.

Pour the warm oil and herbs over the eggplant mixture. Stir to combine. Taste, and adjust salt and lemon juice as necessary.

We ate this as a salad, but it would also be SO GOOD over toast.

Tabouleh, pickles, and other random meals

This weekend we processed a bunch of veggies into things to eat later. I guess humans have been doing this for our entire evolutionary history, but with the advent of grocery stores, well, it's less fundamental to survival. But it still seems a worthwhile thing to do when presented with all this fresh produce, that won't stay fresh forever.

We also swung by the farm, on our way home from other wanderings, and picked more green beans, husk cherries, blueberries, cherry tomatoes, and herbs. Because we totally needed more food. But god are those husk cherries amazing. Planning to make a big batch of pesto, hence all the basil. Oh, and the chanterelles - we happened across them as we were hiking. Can't not stop for that! And they fry up so well with butter. mmm. And we bought two melons from the farm store, a mini watermelon and a mini musk melon.

Anyway, as for the pickles, we've had good luck with lacto-fermented peppers, and preserved lemons, but have struggled with cucumbers in the past. I think this is largely due to getting them from Russos' sale shelf, so they're already old, and also because Ed doesn't always use a recipe. I looked one up. The golden ratio appears to be:

4C water:3tbs kosher salt

The rest is all flavoring. So, one batch of Moroccan-themed carrots, and two batches of cukes, because we do have a lot of those. The brine for both veggies was just the 4C:3Tbs ratio.

Carrots:
peel of 1 lemon (washed, then peeled with a vegetable peeler)
2 small dried red chilis
1 tsp cracked coriander
1 tsp cracked cumin
About a third of a small white onion, cut into thin rings

I think that was it?

Pack the spices and onion in the bottom of a jar, and cut the carrots into sticks. pack the carrot sticks into the jar, and top with brine. Make sure the carrots are fully covered, or else they'll mold, and then you have to throw out the whole batch. Use a weight (like a small jar filled with water) to push down on the veggies, and leave 'em be for 3-4 days.

Cucumbers:
1 tsp peppercorns
1 tsp fennel seeds
a few sprigs of fresh tarragon
1 clove
about a third of a small white onion, cut into thin rings

Same deal as the carrots. Pack the onion and spices into a jar, cut the cucumbers into nice 1/4" rounds, and pack them into the jar. Cover with brine, put a weight on top, and leave them alone for a few days before tasting.




Tabouleh
We make this stuff a lot, but this week's CSA was the perfect CSA for tabouleh. Not only that, but the little fresh red onions they gave us are just amazing - so crunchy and sweet, it's almost like eating something entirely different than an onion. Onion can be hit or miss in a tabouleh, but with onions this good, you're only hurting yourself by not eating them raw. Because we still had a huge pile of cucumbers left over after making two jars of pickles (I think 5?), it was a cucumber-heavy dish, but we made like two gallons of it, so it all works out in the end.

5 cucumbers, diced
2 tomatoes, diced
2 small red onions, diced
~2C parsley, chopped
~1C basil, chopped
2 lemons
2C bulgur
2C water or vegetable stock
1/2C? olive oil
Salt. lots. to taste.

Boil the veggie stock, and once it boils dump in the bulgur and stir it around, then leave it covered for at least 5min.

Dice all veggies and put into a bowl. Squeeze in the lemons and give a couple good glugs of olive oil and pinches of salt. Stir, taste, adjust. Ed and I have different opinions on how wet a tabouleh should be; I like mine relatively dry, he likes his sopping wet. Preferably with oil. We usually compromise by me making it my way, and he'll just add oil.

Season the bulgur with some oil and salt and lemon, taste, and add to the big bowl.



This gets better on day 2 or 3, if it lasts that long.

Other meal photos -


Zoodles and a bolognese. That was a damn good bolognese; normally I think I try to cram in too many veggies, but this one I knew we were serving it over zoodles (zucchini noodles), so I left it alone, and those flavors just sang together.



Bacon (pour off some of the fat but reserve it in case you need to add it back), onion, garlic, ground beef (cook off the fat in a different pan first), tons of fresh savory and oregano and thyme, bay leaf, dried red pepper, oven-dried tomatoes, tomato sauce, tomato paste, a solid 2C or so of red wine, chicken stock as needed. Large quantities of fresh basil are to be served on top of this.

Don't skimp on the wine. Also, when they say don't cook with wine you won't drink, that means you should be drinking a glass as you cook, right?

As for zoodles, I think we both agreed that it was an acceptable experiment, with no need to repeat again.

Ham, cheese, and squash-stuffed french toast. Took about half a grated yellow zucchini to fill between the cheese slices, with the bread dunked in eggs first. Still working on those VT leftovers; sliced bread and lunchmeats? Not really my style, but you can't let food go to waste. Anyway, this was good, despite its resemblance to a sandwich.




Green beans and kielbasa. The green beans were really tasty. A hunk of butter in the pan, tons of garlic, a splash of oil (less than a glug), saute the garlic until golden and add the beans, saute until soft. Add chicken stock as needed if things get dry, and squeeze half a lemon over the whole thing. Top with some toasted almonds.

Then after taking the beans out, we added a spoonful of dijon mustard and reduced the sauce a bit. This paired wonderfully with the kielbasa.

We tried making some zucchini and eggplant chips in the oven. Slice the veggies into rounds, salt and let them sit until they've released some water. Squeeze, then dredge first in egg, then in cornmeal, and bake at 500F. We found that the zucchinis were good, but the eggplant got too soft. I guess actually deep frying would be better, unless you like soft eggplant. Eh, worth a try.




Kale salad, meatballs, and an Ottolenghi-inspired "burnt aubergine" dish. Ed declared the eggplant dish the best thing I've ever made. It was good. Recipe in a different post, because indexing. Oh, and a watermelon-basil-rita. That drink was DANGEROUS. I don't really know what was in it. White overproof rum, tonic, muddled basil and watermelon, and who knows what else.

The kale salad had a dressing of mustard, lemon, oil, and salt. It also used up the last of our redleaf lettuce (not pictured: the big-ass salad I had for lunch Saturday that used up most of the red leaf lettuce). Then some steamed yellow beans, slivered almonds cooked in butter, dried cherries.

I have no idea what Ed did to make the meatballs, but they involved some amount of bulgur, salt and pepper, and a bunch of fresh savory.

Red lentils and collards

This is from week 3, oops. Better late than never. Because it was tasty, and we should definitely make again. The gist is that when you add collards to an Indian-themed lentil dish, it's hard to go wrong. And while home made Indian food is never as good as the restaurant stuff, unless you're from India, this was definitely a delicious way to eat lentils and collards.

1 onion

3-4 cloves garlic

3 tomatillos

1c red lentils

2c chicken stock

1 head collards

1 tbs grated fresh ginger*

Spices: 

Cumin

Coriander

Clove

Cardamom

Black pepper

Turmeric

*One thing that helps with ginger is if you leave it, skin-on, in your freezer. Then when you want to use some, you just microplane however much you want into your food, leaving the skin on. Super easy to grate, and also incorporates itself nicely into the food because it's grated so finely. 

Toast your spices in a dry pan, then grind them up. Toasting is important. It makes things taste better.

Cook down the onion, add the garlic and cook until toasty. Add the lentils and ginger and chicken stock and spices and get that simmering, then add the collards. Cover, and cook until the lentils have broken down and the collards and dark green and everything tastes right, stirring occasionally. Add stock or water as necessary along the way. Serve with rice.

The thing this was really missing was spice. Preferably fresh peppers. Next time!

Dressed up tomato toast

We were watching some sort of Bon Appetit video online the other day, and Carla made some delicious-looking middle eastern-inspired tomato flatbreads. She described them as "dressed up" tomatoes on toast, and it looked really delicious. So with those big gorgeous tomatoes that we got in the CSA, plus all the herbs we had on hand, we figured that would be pretty tasty. We weren't wrong, this was amazing. The key is that every component was amazing on its own, so combining them just amplified things. We'll be making this again. 

There are four components to this piece of deliciousness: Flatbread, tzatziki, smashed chickpeas, and seasoned tomatoes. Each element is delicious alone, but together you've got a real symphony in your mouth. 

The one on the left has both the tzatziki and the chickpea smash, the right still only has the tzatziki

Flat bread

The flatbread we sort of winged it. Could have made a traditional yeasty bread with yogurt for tanginess, but instead went with our trusty sourdough for the tanginess (is that a word? spellcheck doesn't seem to agree with me that it's a word). 

About a cup of starter, a cup of warm water, and two cups of flour. 1.5ish teaspoons of salt. Plus a sprinkle of instant yeast to help it poof. Not sure if that was necessary. Knead it well, and then let it rise while preparing the fillings. For extra tanginess, you can mix up the starter and a cup of flour the night before, and let the starter eat all that yummy flour so that when you knead in the next cup, it's got even more tang. We went with that approach, because we'd started making bread the night before and then got lazy and went to bed instead.

Anyway, after you've assembled the fillings, divide your dough into six balls, and roll them out or stretch them out. Heat some oil in a pan, and start frying up your dough. Somehow, this makes things so much stretchier than just baking it. Once the bottom is nicely browned, brush the top with oil, and flip. I think it was about 5 minutes for the first side, and maybe 2 minutes for the second side. They'll stay flexy after cooking, don't worry. 

Tzatziki

This has got to be one of my favorite ways to eat cucumbers. Herby and creamy and cool, it complements all sorts of things. It's also a delicious way to eat yogurt. You can't go wrong. 

1 cucumber, peeled (could use two, if you're got an over-abundance)

1 small red onion (or shallot)

1C (maybe? it was whatever was left in the yogurt container) greek yogurt. Regular would work too

juice of half a lemon

pinch of salt

1 tsp chopped mint

1/2C chopped parsley

1/4C chopped cilantro*

1/4C chopped basil*

*You could totally get away with just using mint and parsley, or in a pinch, just mint. But more herbs make it taste even better!

chop the red onion and cucumber finely. Chop the herbs. Mix everything together. You could make this the night before. The longer it sits, the more the flavors meld. 

The red onions that we got from this week's CSA are amazing - not at all that overwhelming raw-onion flavor you get from the big ones, rather just sweet and crunchy and juicy and just the right amount of spice. I'm so in love with those onions! I've never loved raw onions before, this is totally a game changer. Anyway, the crunch of an onion is different than the crunch of a cucumber, so it's nice to have both in the sauce. 

Chickpea smash

Again, you could make this the night before, because the longer all the things sit together, the more the flavors meld. This is another easy one - 

1 can chickpeas, drained

juice of half a lemon

2 good pinches of salt

~1/2C roughly-chopped parsley

~1/4C chopped cilantro

Put the chickpeas in a bowl, and mash them a bit with a fork. You're not making hummus, leave some big chunks. Add everything else, stir it around, and you're good to go.

Seasoned tomatoes

This is the sort of dish to make when tomatoes are perfectly ripe. The sort of dish to make when you've got those big heirloom tomatoes from the farmers market, the sorts of tomatoes that when you sniff them you swoon. Because the tomatoes are the star of this show.

Slice them into rounds, maybe 1/4" thick. When you place them on the flatbreads, sprinkle with salt and za'atar and sumac. You could skip the sumac, since there is already sumac in za'atar. But don't skip the seasoning, as it brings out so many more flavors. 

Assemble

On a piece of flatbread, spread some tzatziki, then some chickpea smash, then lay down some tomatoes and season. Cut into wedges, and eat with your fingers. 

We also served this with some roasted carrots, since we have a LOT of carrots right now. 

This is my newest favorite summer dish. Enjoy! 

CSA Week #7

Look at all the colors this week! We're into the fun part of summer. I think, though, that we may need to spend a little bit of time pickling and preserving this weekend, just because of all those cucumbers. That's a lot of squash, too. This'll be interesting.

Anyway, the haul:
2 eggplans
4 tomatoes
3lb? zucchinis
4lb? cucumbers
3lb? carrots, including some of those rainbow carrots, which are so pretty but don't actually taste as good as the orange ones. The purple ones taste more like a generic root vegetable, and the yellow ones taste kind of like a parsnip. Still tasty though!
1 giant head of redleaf lettuce
1 head lacino kale
1 head cilantro
4 mini red onions

And of course then there are still the green beans, cherry tomatoes, blueberries, and husk cherries that Ed picked last week. And basil, parsley, sage, savory, and oregano. We'll be eating well this week!

Breakfast kimchi, and catching up

I'm totally out of the habit of blogging our various meal creations, after taking two weeks off from it. Nothing all that exciting in our little cooking world, mostly just more ways to use up zucchinis and finally a vegetable stew that really included some of everything.

Ed stopped by the farm again on his way back from VT. In addition to herbs (so much basil!), blueberries, green beans, and husk cherries (omg SO DELICIOUS!), apparently we're allowed to pick 10 stems of flowers. In a gesture as romantic as it gets, Ed picked flowers for me :). We may keep them in a mason jar, but it makes the table look so much prettier.

The all-the-veggies vegetable stew started out with the idea that it might be a pasta sauce, but then it changed its mind as it just never morphed into that. In a big dutch oven I started by cooking down one of those young onions, before adding garlic, and then chopped celery. The celery was a direct result of eating other peoples' leftovers from VT. Then I added a greenish/red pepper, a grated carrot, and three small green zucchinis, grated. And then, in the spirit of "use everything up on Wednesday night because we get more food on Thursday!", I added the rest of the kale, lots of basil, and some parsley. And some chicken stock and some veggie stock, since we needed more liquid.

Overall, it really could have used some heat. Or something. Maybe olives and capers? Not my finest creation, though it was improved by the addition of lots of grated parmesan cheese. Totally edible, though.


At least it's a way to eat your veggies

The breakfast kimchi, which isn't really kimchi, is worth a mention though. I had been thinking that I'd try and make kimchi with some leftover napa cabbage (not from the CSA, but that doesn't mean it doesn't need eating), but then I sort of forgot about it after salting, and eventually just gave up on the kimchi idea because I wanted to go to bed. But then in the morning I was like, don't give up on the cabbage! So I made a kimchi flavor paste thing, sauteed the cabbage with the onion greens, mixed with eggs, and had a very enjoyable little breakfast.




Insta-kimchi
4 cloves garlic, minced
1 tbs ginger, grated
1 tsp sugar
1 tsp soy sauce (fish sauce would be better. we're out)
1 tsp hon dashi
1 tsp red pepper flakes
1 tsp fermented pepper sauce (happens to live in our fridge. you can leave this out)

1 head napa cabbage
lots of scallions or green onions
2 eggs

So, make a paste of all those flavors. Hon dashi is little balls of fish stock, at least that's how I understand it. Adds a nice flavor to things. Actual dried shrimps would have been good here, but it's been too long since I've been to the Super88, so definitely no dried shrimps in my pantry.

In an ideal world, quarter the cabbage, then slices into 2-3" pieces. Salt, and leave in a colander to drain for 2 hours. But you could skip this step, since you're just sauteing it. Chop the green onions into ~3" long pieces, and maybe cut in half.

Heat some oil in a pan. Drop in the bowl of kimchi flavors, and let that cook until you smell cooked garlic. Add the cabbage and onion, and saute until it's as cooked as you'd like it.

Scramble an appropriate number of eggs. Add an appropriate amount of cabbage mixture. Enjoy the spicy morning wake-up!

CSA Week #6

We were just gone for two weeks, which meant that we missed week #5 completely (luckily a friend got the bonus veggies), and then picked up week 6 from the farm (since we were relatively close with me coaching in Winchendon), and I forgot to take a photo. Whoops! The haul included:

- two gorgeous giant tomtaoes
- two heads of redleaf lettuce
- 3lb summer squash and zucchs
- 3lb cucumbers
- 1 head garlic with stalk
- 3 large spring onions
- 1 head kale
- 3 peppers, of the green-red marbled variety
- 3lb carrots

Ed also acquired a TON of basil on his way up to VT, among other herbs, so we've been putting basil into just about everything. And after being fed dining hall food all week at ski camp, I've never been so excited to cook for myself again.

Of note, we pickled a bunch of stuff from the last week before heading out on vacation - beets and a giant tub of pickled cucumbers, and then blanched a broccoli and the kale, to freeze and use in future dishes. Spent most of the first vacation week using up heads of lettuce (from a different farmer friend) and herbs for a tasty dressing, but I didn't remember to take photos of anything.


Night before leaving meant putting away a lot of food. That salad was pretty tasty.


With the little zucchinis, I've gotten obsessed with grating them and making little fritters. So good! So far, seems like the best mix has been a few tablespoons of cornmeal, two eggs, a pinch or two of baking powder, a pinch of salt, and about two cups of grated zucchs. Drop into patties and fry. Serve with yogurt if you've got it, or just eat by the hand. Tasty stuff!

I think this version had leftover wild rice in it, with some chopped broccoli.


This version was green zucchinis and cornmeal, very tasty. Sort of like a veggie pancake. The yogurt was a sheep's yogurt, which was also delicious, extra tangy. And a side of more squash, just because.


A meal we'd made for the family. Only 37 people showed up, yikes. pitas, with yogurt-marinated chicken and herb/oil-marinated veggies and tzatziki sauce and hummus and hot pepper sauce and roasted tomatillo sauce and grilled scallions and I forget what else. And bonus salads, because we were trying to use up lettuce. Success on that front!

I'm thinking that with the big onions for this week, we'll make some sort of onion-zucchini sauce for some pasta. I'd rather not pickle all the cucumbers, so I guess that means lots of cucumber salads. Cucumber soup? Gazpacho? We'll see.



More fritters, these ones consisting of yellow squash, a carrot, a ton of basil, some garlic, the green parts of one of the spring onions, and a leaf or two of kale. Plus four eggs and some corn meal and baking powder and a spoonful of chickpea flour. And then I felt like they needed something on top, so I chopped up some kalamata olives.

The cucumber salad was just cukes with a dressing of rice wine vinegar, sesame oil, honey, and salt, and then some chiffonaded basil and mint and a good spoonful or two of poppy seeds. A thinly-sliced hot pepper would have gone wonderfully with this, but I didn't have one.