Squash me

< carnival squash


butternut squash>




I used one of each to make tonight's dinner, a pasta dish vaguely modeled on this Mario Batali recipe. Very good, even though I had rather a free hand with the crushed red pepper and it came out spicier than I'd like.

I made it with whole wheat pasta, and a perfect combination of texture. Plus, this would make a terrific vegan dish as well - I adore cheese, but this would be just fine without it.

This may be the healthiest thing I have ever cooked.

Today's cooking challenge:
I wanted to create something with the beets and sweet potatoes, because I thought it would be tasty and seasonal and also really, really spectacular-looking. I was thinking of something that interleaved slices of beet and potato - that would look great, right? And they would taste right together - kind of earthy? (I had this thought originally when I was pulling some roasted beets out of the oven, and of course they smell like delicious, juicy dirt. Which sweet potatoes kind of do to, right? Well, to me they do.

Anyway, I think I will do something like this, which I have made before to delicious results and for which I have all the vegetables, even yellow peppers already sliced! Go me! Maybe I'll take a picture.

EDITED TO ADD: Well, okay, no picture, and no new recipe. I "created" something with beets and sweet potatoes only to the extent that I added beets to a sweet potato recipe, and it was sufficiently foolproof to survive. Presenting it composed rather than tossed didn't add much pizazz either. Knife skills might have made a difference...anyway, tasted fine, looked fine, healthy, fine....I just wonder what would have really made it sing.

New Recipe: Accidentally Thai Orzo salad.

I made this up off the top of my head the other day, and it ended up being DELICIOUS!

Put a large pot of water on to boil

In a skillet, heat some garlic and minced shallots in olive oil.

Seed, slice into tiny bits, and add to pan 3-4 of the hot red peppers that the guy who works on you car gave you. Add those to the skillet. Cook until garlic is golden and shallots are soft.

Shred some napa cabbage, and throw it into the skillet – as much as will fit. Add a splash of the hot water from the pasta pan. Cover and cook until it wilts.

Once the cabbage has shrunk down enough so that the pan’s contents are almost stir-able, uncover and let the water boil off, stirring occasionally.

About this time, the water should be boiling in the pasta pan. Add some orzo (I used about 1/3 of the small box, so a couple of ounces) and cook uncovered until done (about 9 minutes.)

Turning your attention back to the skillet - Once the water from the skillet has boiled off, throw in a decent glug of seasoned rice vinegar, and let that cook until the super-acidic smell has dissipated. (You're reducing it, but it’s hard to know when it’s reduced, because the cabbage is throwing off a little water. You have to do it by smell.)

When that seems done, take it off the heat. Transfer to a storage or serving dish, to cool.

When the orzo is done, drain it (REALLY WELL – shake the colander) and add it to the dish. Toss to combine.

Taste and adjust seasoning. I went a little astray at this point - Perhaps I got a pepper seed on my tongue, because when I tasted it at this stage, I had the impression that this dish was abusively spicy - like it might be entirely too hot to eat. This did not turn out to be true.

Chop one cucumber and half a red bell pepper, and drain them on a paper towel. You might even squeeze them a little. I was really worried about the dish turning out watery, so I tried to squish every drop out of the orzo and the fresh vegetables. As it turns out, It wasn't watery in the least. Was that because I was extra-vigilant? Or was it a dumb thing to be worried about? Who knows? Anyway, add the chopped vegs to the salad and toss to combine.

Refrigerate. Serve with a squeeze of lime juice.

Awesome Dinner

No kidding, this is totally delicious. It's ridiculous.

Greens and Shrimp

2 big bunches sweet potato leaves plus whatever else is lying around
heaping spoonful minced garlic
Oil
salt and pepper
some shrimp, not even a pound. Whatever's on sale.

Wash your vegetation, cut it into pieces, and shell your shrimp. Set both aside.
Heat a wok or frying pan; add oil and heat until the oil shimmies a little.
Add the garlic to the pan, and for God's sake keep it moving. Do NOT let it turn black. Or even dark brown. A little golden is fine.

When it starts to smell good (instead of tinny), add the green stuff. I has a couple dispeptic-looking green onions, so I put those in after the garlic, with some salt and pepper. Then I added the leaves, stems, and some edible pea pods I had left over.

Stir fry the green stuff until the leaves are dark green and wilted, and the stems and whatever else are bright green and a little soft. Plate this and add a little salt. (We're big sea salt fans here, and this is a good choice here because the bigger flakes don't just dissolve into the dish - they keep some personality.)

Turn the heat down in the pan a little, add another splash of oil, and throw in your shrimp. A little salt and pepper - very little - is all they need to add, because the stuff that's stuck to the pan gets stuck to them and makes a little coating. If you really wanted to, you could throw in a spicy dry seasoning, but I think the subtle garlic thing is just right.

Stir-fry the shrimp until they turn pink (with a tiny bit of golden brown) and throw them onto the greens. I served this with coconut rice, but you don't really need it. (For some reason, I always think coconut rice - that is, rice made with coconut milk - is going to be better than it actually is. It's good, but not really good enough to justify the massive carb-and-fat intake.)

CSA Take Two: The Festival of Leaves continues.

Alternate title: Beets Me!


So we got another pile of leaves last week, and I have been very uncreative about what to do with them. BUT tonight I made a great salad:

Ingredients:
various mystery greens
(big bowlful, torn up, split between 2 plates)
3 large beets, roasted last night, chopped up
corn cut from 1 cob, leftover from last night
2 or so green onions, chopped

Piece of salmon filet, broiled with soy sauce, honey and chili-garlic sauce. halved. (This is great because it only takes like 5 minutes.)

I bought some beets at the supermarket yesterday, and I roasted them (like this except I forgot to put foil on the pan - it just takes a little longer). As the page suggests, I made a vinegrette with orange juice, ginger, olive oil and red wine vinegar, chopped the beets into large messy chunks, combined beets and dressing and put it all in the fridge overnight.

For dinner: plate some greens, plop chunks of chilled beets around the outside, drop a portion of salmon in the center, sprinkle chilled corn and green onions all over, drizzle on the red liquid left in the beet bowl. A little sea salt.

This turned out to be a great combination of warm and cold, acidic and sweet, crusty and juicy, fresh and salty. It was also completely gorgeous - brilliant red, pale yellow, shades of green. I really recommend this.

Popsicle of the day: Raspberry yogurt, frozen blueberries! Very good.

Customer Service Success Story of the Day: West Bend
(who made my popsicle molds, under the brand name Back to Basics) is sending me more popsicle molds! Now we can have, like, a popsicle dinner party! Go buy yourself some of these. They're at Target, with the snow cone syrups and ice shavers.

I made collard greens!

(or: "Everything's Better with Bacon and Beer")

EDITED TO ADD:
Hello, Beer People!
My brother, the beer writer, has suggested on his blog that there must be a better beer to use making collards, and has put out a call for suggestions. I just want to make sure I'm on record as saying DUH, absolutely, I'm sure there is. I threw in some of the beer I was drinking. I feel that perhaps my brother is having a laugh at my expense, suggesting that I am not a beer connoisseur. I am more than willing to own up. I AM NOT A BEER CONNOISSEUR.

I am a banana bread connoisseur.

Back to the post:

Ingredients:
2 strips bacon
big spoonful of chopped garlic
bottle of beer (I had a Sam Adams Cherry Wheat)
and a small bunch of ridiculously gigantic greens.

Honestly, I had no idea what these things were. But our farm - the people who grew this stuff - helpfully provide a web page entitled "Name the Vegetable!" to help you identify what's staring you down.

These things looked like the broadleaf weeds that grew in the yard of my childhood home, magnified. The leaves are thick and leathery and huge.

Oddly enough, instead of doing something normal like looking at the internet, or at The Joy of Cooking, (actually, the really normal thing for me to do would be to think it and re-think it and research it until long after the greens had rotted in the crisper...) I looked at this big mess of leaves and decided to just...make something up.

I got the clever idea to start with bacon - how far wrong can you go, really, with bacon? I keep some bacon in the freezer - we use so little, I think this half-pound will cover us for the year.

Anyway, I heated up a frying pan and broke up two slices of frozen bacon, and cooked them for several minutes, until the pieces were starting to cook but not crispy yet. I added the garlic and cooked that, over medium heat, while I washed each leaf and removed the stems. I 'chiffonade-ed' them - rolled the leaves tightly and sliced them into thin ribbons.

I threw the greens in the pan, where they wilted very slowly.
This began a fairly long hands-on process: letting the greens cook, throwing in a splash of water, covering them, uncovering them, lather, rinse, repeat. I was drinking a beer at the time (along with reheating pizza, talking on the phone and cleaning out the fridge) and at some point I threw a big splash of beer into the pan.

Which gave me two exactly simultaneous thoughts -
"Uh oh, I think I just rendered this inedible"
and
"hey, that smells pretty awesome."

After that, I spent about 20 more minutes splashing in beer and cooking it down, splashing in beer and cooking it down. When I decided it was finished, the greens still (unbelievably) had a little crunch to them. It was delicious. I ate it all.

If I do this again, I'll add a some water with the greens and cook them covered for a good long while. Then I'd let the water cook off, add some beer and let that reduce. The sweetness of that particular beer gave the dish something like carmelization, which I'd like more of. I'd also use some onions (I've run out.) And it would have been fine with just one strip of bacon.

All in all, not a company dinner, but good wholesome fresh food that I enjoyed cooking and eating. Nothing to sneeze at.

CSA Take One - Wide World of Leaves

For weeks, I have been anticipating this first week in June, because it's the start of our 6 months of produce! We were able to split a farm share from the nearest CSA, and so, through NOVEMBER if you can believe it, we'll be having farm roulette, getting a share of whatever's ripe and spiffy.

With dirt still clinging to it.

We've split a share with a super-cool family down the street. They're about to have their first child - pretty much any minute now! - and they picked up the veges this week, and strolled down our little street, cuddled together under a big black umbrella, to bring us our half.

"It's all, like leafy." said tiny L, laying a couple of bags on the kitchen counter. "You go down a row of bins, and pick out one of each thing, and then I split each head. Oh! But we got two boxes of strawberries! So we each get a whole box!"

I looked at the strawberries a little skeptically. It was one of those tiny boxes - a pint, I guess.

OH MY LORD THESE WERE THE BEST STRAWBERRIES EVER.

If you had bought a pint of strawberries at the supermarket, at least one-third of them would be sour and green, and at least a couple of them would be overripe and starting to dissolve.

In this tiny box, every strawberry was perfectly ripe, juicy, and beautiful - no big chewy tasteless white core. The leaves pop right off, and leave you nothing by deliciousness.

I was so sold on local strawberries that I ran by the farmer's market yesterday and got a big box - haven't tried them yet - and some asparagus.

For the record, we got:
red chard
collard greens
romaine lettuce
spinach
and some kind of lettuce with purple leaves and a mild taste.

And some other kind of lettucy thing, which I cannot describe because we ate it already.

Last night's dinner:
A huge salad featuring
some spinach
some romaine
some of the purple stuff
and all of the other lettucy stuff
plus
small chunks of blanched asparagus
a piece of string cheese, cut into tiny rounds
and some pine nuts

with this dressing which I love.

reviews:
Eric ate a metric ton, but then said the dressing was too spicy.
Ian would not eat anything but the pine nuts. (His did not have spicy dressing.)
I want to make it again tonight, except I have to figure out what to do with a crisper full of collard greens.