CSA Week #16

I guess we're getting used to eating squash. The last one was a giant butternut squash, where I'd slowly been hacking slices off to roast. We finally killed it in a soup, which was surprisingly delicious, actually. Squash, apple, onion, coconut milk, spices, lots of ginger, and a little homemade sriracha. I would eat that again!

We topped the soup with some braised mini brassicae, and some oyster mushrooms sauteed in plenty of butter. Then Ed made some sort of gin drink with ginger beer, lime, and mint, and that was also delicious. Pretty good eats! 

This was another heavy week, though we've scarily eaten our way through much of this already.

Turnips
2 spaghetti squashes
2 heads of collards (one in the box, and we traded out some hot peppers for the other bunch in the swap box)
onions
baby bok choy
green peppers
eggplant
cilantro
baby braising greens
1 head redleaf lettuce

Overall, a really nice mix of green and colored veggies. 

While this meal may look beige, it was actually delicious. We may have completely trashed the kitchen, though, with like six different things going on.

The chicken drumsticks were tossed in some spices (cardamom, cumin, black pepper) and sriracha and a little oil, then baked at 450F for maybe 45 minutes? maybe an hour? While everything else was baking.

Potato and turnip wedges were tossed with oil and salt and roasted at 450F. Then we put some asparagus pesto, foraged from the freezer, on top. Very tasty.

Collards and onions, braised with some coconut milk (leftover from the squash soup) and spices. Nice to have a little green stuff on the plate.

Eggplant slices, salted and drained, then dredges in egg and cornmeal and fried. Those really needed some sort of sauce on top, but we didn't have anything handy. In any case. they were quite good. We made sure to have pretty thick slices, so that they weren't total mush by the time the cornmeal got crunchy. A nonstick pan helps with the frying.

And finally, some cheddar scallion biscuits. We used Alton Brown's Phase II biscuit, which is a fantastic biscuit, and we tend to just dump those on the pan as drop-biscuits. So, that recipe, plus about 3oz of grated cheddar and a sprinkling of chopped chives (we keep those in the freezer, pre-chopped, and it's a pretty good method). They were fantastic. As ever.

So did we really need to use three baking sheets, two frying pans, two cutting boards, a mixing bowl, and countless utensils? No. Was it delicious? Yes. Did we eventually clean up our mess? Yes. Worth it!

This was one of those lovely nights where I come home and Ed has made dinner for me. He made a slaw of turnips, green peppers, and onion, that was marinated in a sort of fish sauce-lime-rice vinegar-sesame seed concoction. It was delicious. On top of that were two little smashburgers, and then some grilled avocado, and a pesto made from the collard stems. Served next to a halved fried bok choy. Quite tasty! Though I'm not sure I need to eat collard stem pesto again.

And then a random meal that totally didn't really work together at all, but was decently edible. Ed had gone to the Super 88 and picked up some little calamari pieces, which he fried in some olive oil that had previously been used to store dried tomatoes, so imparted some of that delicious tomato flavor. Those were served on some mini braising greens mixed with the aforementioned dried tomatoes, next to a spaghetti squash where I'd attempted to make a cheese sauce.

The squash was fine, but, I should have skipped the sauce and just put the cheddar on top. The innards were way too runny and slightly overcooked, since it had been cooked twice at that point. It was totally edible, but not exactly delicious. Eh, sometimes you cook things and it's delicious and you're like "wow I would order that in a restaurant!" and sometimes you cook things and you're like "well, it's good I was hungry."