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Archive for the ‘CSA’ Category

Fancy eggplants call for a new recipe

Posted in CSA, Eats, Photographs, tagged , , , , , , , , on July 24, 2012 | 4 Comments »

Don’t let the name of her blog fool you: Kristen over at Crafty Kristen has a heck of a green thumb in addition to mad knitting skills.

She gifted me with a couple of bags filled with goodies from her garden recently as she was preparing to go spend a few days at the beach with her husband. I brought home yellow pear tomatoes (sweet and delicious), cherry tomatoes and eggplants.

Totally exotic eggplants.

The only eggplant I’m familiar with is the big purple one. I remember seeing them when I was a kid, although I don’t recall whether my grandparents grew them, and I don’t remember ever eating them until I tried the ever popular eggplant Parmesan in college. I certainly never cooked an eggplant myself.

So when a CSA box arrived a couple of years ago with an eggplant inside, I faced a quandary. I made a baked version of eggplant Parmesan first — it was delicious, but not quite delicious enough to make up for the time it required and the mess it made.

I finally found an easier eggplant pasta sauce recipe with a complex, garlicky flavor. It took care of the huge purple eggplants in the CSA box, and made enough that I had leftovers for at least a couple of days.

Pre-eggplant season, Kristen had recommended a recipe for Pasta alla Norma, which I tucked away on Pinterest in anticipation of this year’s first CSA box.

When she handed me a small plastic bag filled with the fanciest eggplants I had ever seen, I knew I couldn’t simply smash them into the gray (yet tasty) pulp resulting from my go-to eggplant pasta sauce recipe.

So I broke out the pasta alla Norma recipe, only to discover three problems:

  • It called for ricotta salata cheese, which I wasn’t entirely sure I could find at Publix.
  • It called for deep-frying the eggplant, while I’m really more of a “lightly sauté” kind of girl.
  • It called for sautéed onions WITHOUT sautéed garlic. Say what now?

I made a few simple changes to the recipe and was psyched about the results. The sauce is very light, but the eggplant makes it filling. I found it made enough for two servings (I only cooked 2.5 ounces of penne rigate), with enough left over for lunch (no pasta, just the chunky sauce).

You have to judge how much basil, eggplant and Parmesan cheese to use. If you want a heartier sauce, use more eggplant. Need more basil flavor? Tear up a few more basil leaves. It’s a forgiving recipe.

Pasta alla Norma

Makes about 3 servings

(Adapted from David Rocco’s recipe)

  • 2.5 oz. penne rigate pasta
  • olive oil
  • 1/2 white onion, chopped
  • 14 oz. diced tomatoes
  • salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste
  • 1 medium-sized eggplant (or a few small eggplants), cubed
  • fresh basil leaves, torn
  • Parmesan cheese

Cook the penne in a pot of boiling salted water, stirring to prevent it from sticking together. While the pasta is cooking, make the sauce.

In a saucepan, heat up a tablespoons of olive oil. Gently sauté onions until tender, then add undrained tomatoes. With the back of a wooden spoon, break up the tomatoes into small chunks.

Add salt and pepper. Cook for a few minutes until the sauce has thickened.

In another pan, sauté the eggplant in olive oil until golden. Add the sautéed eggplant and basil leaves to the sauce, and stir in a few sprinkles of Parmesan.

Plate the servings of pasta and spoon sauce on top. Sprinkle with more Parmesan, if desired, and serve immediately.

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Second CSA box yields a colorful harvest

Posted in CSA, Eats, Photographs, tagged , , , , , on July 9, 2012 | 2 Comments »

Cucumbers, squash, lemon cucumbers, green tomatoes, more squash (sigh) and red noodle beans.

This week’s CSA box was heavy with a little bit of everything.

I faced two unfamiliar items: lemon cucumbers and red noodle beans. The lemon cucumbers are round and a little sweeter than other varieties, and the red noodle beans were tasty but weird.

I riffed on this recipe for Red Noodle Beans with Cracked Black Pepper, only I didn’t have any soy sauce, and I forgot that I just received a couple of bell peppers, so I pretty much just sautéed them in olive oil with diced onion and garlic for about 10 minutes. They tasted like string beans, more or less, except they were squeaky, like cheese curds.

Like I said, tasty but weird.

The box also contained one lone cherry tomato, only I thought I saw two cherry tomatoes, so I ate it expecting to dig the other one out for the husband in a few minutes. Alas, no. I scarfed down the only one. Lucky for me, he’s the forgiving type, and he doesn’t have the same extreme craving for homegrown tomatoes that I do.

Sweet onion, bell peppers, basil, the biggest eggplant I’ve ever had and various hot peppers.

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Sautéed peas end tradition of salty, mushy vegetables

Posted in Cats, CSA, Eats, Photographs, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on July 2, 2012 | 1 Comment »

I was excited and a little leery when I found a bagful of fresh English peas in my latest CSA box.

As confirmed by my CSA representative, English peas are extremely sensitive to hot weather, so they would have never had a chance on my grandparents’ farm in South Mississippi. Therefore, the only English peas I’ve ever eaten have come straight out of the can, slightly mushy and pretty bland. Meh.

Since the record-breaking heat in North Alabama/South Tennessee was making it clear that this would be the only fresh English peas I would get this year, I knew I had to make the most of them.

I don’t mean this as an insult to my Southern ancestry, but at some point cooks in the South started boiling vegetables into a salty mush. I remember the first time I ever had a string bean that had been briefly steamed, and thus still held a bit of natural sweetness and a light crunch. (Truly, it would have been considered underdone at my grandmother’s house.) Corn on the cob became a whole new experience for me when I discovered that I could simply wrap individual ears in waxed paper and microwave them for a few minutes, leaving sweet and crunchy kernels that needed neither salt nor butter.

I was determined not to turn these peas into mush.

I found inspiration at Williams-Sonoma’s website: Sautéed English Peas with Garlic and Sesame. Unfortunately, I didn’t have sesame seeds or sesame oil in my pantry, so I had to wing it. I also don’t know how many pounds of peas I started with; Williams-Sonoma recommended two garlic cloves for 3 pounds of unshelled English peas. Do the math for the amount of peas you have, or just use a couple of cloves of garlic.

There are few vegetable recipes that wouldn’t be made better with a couple of cloves of garlic.

The husband was at first stunned by the color of the peas when I removed the lid from the pan; the short cooking time had left the peas a brilliant green. The texture was magnificent; they weren’t crunchy or chewy, but they weren’t mushy either. The garlic flavor burst through with every bite, but not in an overwhelming way.

Sautéed English Peas with Garlic

  • Fresh English peas, shelled
  • 2 cloves garlic, minced
  • 1 tbsp. olive oil
  • Pinch of sea salt
  • Pinch of freshly ground pepper

Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil. Fill a large bowl 2/3 full with ice water. Add the peas to the boiling water and cook for 3 minutes. Drain the peas and immediately plunge them into the ice water. Let stand for two minutes and drain.

In a large frying pan over medium-high heat, heat the olive oil. Add the garlic and sauté, stirring constantly, until it is fragrant but not brown, about 30 seconds.

Add the peas, salt and pepper, and sauté, tossing and stirring occasionally, until the peas are just tender, 4 to 5 minutes. Taste and adjust the seasonings. Serve immediately.

****************

Yang hasn’t given up his photobombing duties; here, he inspects the bowl of English peas mid-shoot.

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Unscheduled summers provide the best memories

Posted in CSA, Family, Photographs, tagged , , , , , , , , on June 24, 2012 | 4 Comments »

My brother and I take a dip, circa 1975.

Nearly everyone I know who has kids spends tons of money and time striving to plan the perfect summer. A host of activities, from vacations to camp to traveling sports leagues, quickly pile up on this short stretch of calendar, seeming more like duties than recreation.

My childhood summers were pretty unstructured. Maybe we’d take a dip in a tiny plastic pool, or maybe just run through sprinklers. Maybe I’d get to go with my grandfather early in the morning to pick tomatoes or beans, or — if I was REALLY lucky — I’d get to dig up potatoes.

As I was shelling a small bagful of English peas from my CSA box yesterday, it occurred to me that some of my best summer afternoons weren’t spent waiting in line at Disney World, running to the next slide at a water park or shaking the sand off my towel at the beach. My most enjoyable summer moments were spent in my grandparents’ den, shelling peas or snapping beans, enjoying an episode of Woody Woodpecker or Tom and Jerry or, better yet, the carefree, Not Very Serious conversations that adults indulge in when they’re pleasantly engaged in a repetitive task with no real deadline.

If I could choose one childhood moment to relive now, it would be one of these afternoons.

I don’t think you can make memories like this on purpose; really, I think my grandparents probably thought I’d rather be off doing something else. But I do wish that more families would slow down a little this summer and spend a few afternoons doing a little of nothing together.

It’s important, and it may be more memorable than anything you could possibly plan.

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As Pictured Below: Veggie cat

Posted in As Pictured Below, Cats, CSA, Eats, Photographs, tagged , , , , , , on June 22, 2012 | 4 Comments »

Yang, simply exhausted from all the sniffing.

My first CSA delivery of the summer yielded quite a spread, including cucumbers, jalapenos, onions, leeks, basil, squash, greens, strawberries, English peas and Roma beans.

As I unloaded the goods, I recalled how Yin used to closely inspect every CSA haul — it was nearly impossible to set up a picture of vegetables without a cat in the frame.

Yin, very serious about his vegetable inspection duties.

Not 30 seconds later, Yang strolled over and resumed Yin’s inspection and photobombing duties. He spent nearly five minutes sniffing every square inch of plant material, nipped at the Chinese cabbage and finally plopped down right on top of the Yukina savoy.

He was in every photograph, just like his brother.

Cats. They know comedy.

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As Pictured Below: Return of the poblano souffle

Posted in As Pictured Below, CSA, Eats, Photographs, tagged , , , , on August 12, 2011 | 2 Comments »

I finally got around to making poblano souffles again. And it totally worked.

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As Pictured Below: Too pretty to eat

Posted in As Pictured Below, CSA, Eats, Photographs, tagged , , , on August 10, 2011 | 2 Comments »

Ground cherries

Unwrapped


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An awesome new meal combo, courtesy of Pinterest

Posted in CSA, Eats, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on July 28, 2011 | Leave a Comment »

This meal was full of so much win that I don’t know where to start.

First of all, I found the recipes on Pinterest, a “virtual billboard” that lets you point people to interesting products and ideas you find online. Yes, other sites let you do the same thing, but Pinterest does it with pictures. Pretty, pretty pictures.

I have a Pinterest board called Enticing Eats where I pin links to foods that I actually plan to make. Ambitious? Yes. Impossible? Not so far.

Two recipes caught my eye within a couple of days of each other: Slow-Baked Mac and Cheese and Baked Zucchini Fries. The macaroni and cheese called for the slow cooker, a promising release from using the oven or stovetop on these 90-plus-degrees days. The zucchini fries had to go in the oven, but I used my small countertop convection oven, which gives off less heat. Best of all, I got to use up some zucchini from the CSA box.

As an aside, when I leave Alabama, I want to move to a place where squash is not the default CSA vegetable.

I halved the recipe for the macaroni and cheese simply because the original called for 12 ounces of Fontina cheese and my Publix only sold it in 9-ounce blocks. I could live with 3 ounces of leftover cheese a lot easier than I could live with 6 ounces of leftover cheese and a bill for TWO 9-ounce blocks of fancy cheese.

Had I not halved the recipe, I would have had a lot more mac and cheese than I needed, although I guess it would probably freeze well. So far, we’ve eaten it for dinner on two nights and I have enough left for one of us to have a generous lunch. Likely me, since I seem to be in charge of consuming leftovers.

The husband gave the dish the ultimate compliment: He said he would eat it again even if the slow cooker was a pain to clean (he’s appointed himself head washer of the slow cooker vessels since they’re so heavy and I’m so [ahem] dainty).

It was creamy and cheesy, as expected, but the eggs gave it an unexpected casserole-like texture. I browned some homemade breadcrumbs (more on those in a minute) in a little olive oil and sprinkled them on top before serving. Fancy.

The zucchini fries were an excellent match. The original recipe called for panko breadcrumbs, and I didn’t even have a container of regular breadcrumbs on hand. I took a few slices of bread out of the freezer and whirled them around in the food processor until they seemed crumb-ish, then mixed them with garlic powder, onion powder, salt and Parmesan cheese, as the original recipe advised.

The breadcrumbs soaked up a lot of the egg mixture coating the zucchini fries, so I had a big mess by the end of the process. Luckily, I had sort of followed the author’s admonishment to lay out only a couple tablespoons of breadcrumbs at a time.

So, while the fries could have been prettier and crunchier and more thoroughly coated with breadcrumbs, they were still quite impressive. They were the first thing the husband smelled when he came down the stairs, and he was one happy diner. The original recipe says to serve them with pizza sauce or ranch dressing, but they were delicious without any sauce whatsoever.

So, the lessons of this post include:

  1. Head to Pinterest and request an invitation (I can probably round up a few for readers who make a good case).
  2. Follow my boards to see the cool stuff I post and let me know that you’re posting cool stuff too.
  3. Make these two dishes.

UPDATE: I made the zucchini fries again, only I rolled them in a paper towel to absorb excess moisture and tossed them in the oven while it preheated to dry them off a little more. I also sprinkled them with plain old store-bought breadcrumbs. With some of the moisture gone, they were crunchier.

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Simple salad uses up summer cucumbers

Posted in CSA, Eats, Photographs, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , on July 20, 2011 | 1 Comment »

True confession: Despite growing up with ready access to my grandparents’ South Mississippi farm, I never learned to like cucumbers. Plates of cucumber slices would appear on the table throughout the summer, and I carefully avoided them.

I eventually learned that cucumbers were delicious alongside other foods. First, a high school friend made me a cucumber sandwich, well-salted and slathered with mayonnaise, and eventually I discovered cucumber salads. Mixed with tomatoes and an olive oil-based dressing, cucumbers became perfectly acceptable, if not well loved.

These perfectly acceptable vegetables show up every two weeks in my CSA box, so I had to find a go-to recipe for a quick and easy salad. Christy Jordan over at Southern Plate posted a recipe last year that looked like every cucumber salad I had ever loved. As a bonus, it called for bottled Italian dressing, so all I had to do was chop vegetables.

I pretty much just chopped up a cucumber, a medium tomato, a small red onion and a banana pepper, then coated the mixture with a few tablespoons of Italian dressing (the Southern Plate recipe calls for an entire bottle of dressing — I just can’t justify making the veggies slosh around in that much dressing).

Marinated for two hours, the salad was the perfect accompaniment to eggplant pasta (also a CSA-inspired dish). Marinated for two days, it was an even better accompaniment for leftover eggplant pasta.

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Learning to love coleslaw

Posted in CSA, Eats, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on June 27, 2011 | Leave a Comment »

True confession: I didn’t eat coleslaw for nearly 30 nears.

For someone who grew up in the South, that’s quite an accomplishment.

The coleslaw I remember from my childhood was a gloppy, mayonnaise-laden mixture that I could not imagine eating. For one thing, it was incredibly crunchy, although I can’t tell you precisely WHY that was so off-putting to me. I’ve never been anti-mayonnaise, either, but those tiny bits of cabbage coated in it were uniquely unappealing.

At some point, however, I discovered vinegar-based coleslaw.

This. Yes. This made sense.

Flavored with vinegar and a little salt and sugar, this brand of coleslaw was more akin to a fresh salad than the heavy blob of a side dish I remembered. I was old enough by that time to be over the fear of crunchiness, too.

I still didn’t venture to make my own coleslaw, however, for a while after that. For one thing, I knew it was a dish that my sometimes-picky husband wasn’t going to touch.

When I joined a CSA, however, I suddenly found myself facing a head of cabbage every couple of weeks. I was also armed with a brand new food processor, complete with a shredding blade.

Oh yeah.

I quickly found a Rachael Ray recipe for Oil and Vinegar Slaw on FoodNetwork.com and went to work. It calls for a 16-ounce bag of shredded cabbage mix, but I just substituted 16 ounces of the head of cabbage (I just chopped off a chunk at a time and weighed it) and ran it through the shredding blade. I never looked up what else might be in cabbage mix, but what I’m making is delicious as is.

Oil and Vinegar Slaw
(Recipe by Rachael Ray)

  • 1/4 cup red wine
  • 2 tablespoons sugar
  • 2 tablespoons peanut or vegetable oil
  • 1 sack, 16 ounces, shredded cabbage mix for slaw salads
  • 1 teaspoon salt
  • Salt and pepper

Mix vinegar and sugar. Add oil. Add cabbage and season with salt and pepper. Toss with fingers to combine. Adjust seasoning. Let stand 20 minutes. Re-toss and serve.

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