mi csa su csa: week 8

Carrots

Tomatoes

Cucumber

Zucchini

Beans

Garlic

Lettuce

Peppers

Eggplant

Onions

CSA share fail this week.

mi csa su csa: week 7

Rainbow Chard
Onion
Potatoes
Cucumbers
Eggplant
Peppers
Tomatoes
Lettuce

I wanted to get to the chard first, as it had the best chance to go bad before we got to it. It was beautiful - different colors, shapes and sizes. I found a creamed chard and noodles recipe that looked great, but I didn't have any noodles except for boxes of mac and cheese. I decided I could fake the creamed chard recipe, so I made the mac and cheese according to the recipe, chopped up the chard with 2 of the onions and pan fried them, seasoning with salt, pepper, Jamaican curry powder and ground ginger. Once everything was finished cooking I mixed it all together for a tasty twist on mac and cheese.

For an appetizer we chopped up a yellow and orange tomatoes to serve over a very fresh burrata with some cracked salt and pepper and a drizzle of balsamic.

Eggplant was next on the list - gorgeous dark purple, long, thin eggplants. We also got one more pepper this week so we decided to pick up some ground pork and make asian-style stuffed peppers. We made them similarly to our cabbage shumai, along with the dipping sauce, with the addition of the eggplant and onions to the stuffing. The key was roasting the oiled peppers a bit before stuffing them and then cooking them in a 350 degree oven for 20 minutes. Served over some sushi rice, the flavors came together nicely.

We've had a beef roast from the other farm in the freezer for a couple of months and finally pulled it out to roast with some carrots and tiny potatoes from the farm, along with some parsnips and vidalia onions. The juices and scrapings from the pan made an excellent gravy.

Got through just about everything, just the lettuce and some of last week's zucchini. But we just got a spiral slicer and I can't wait to make some zucchini noodles with it.

mi csa su csa: week 6

Carrots
Onions
Potatoes
Green Pepper
Cucumber
Zucchini
Tomatoes
Garlic

With an abundance of zucchini and carrots we got to work making fritters. They were ok, but not the best version we've made. Other than that we didn't have a chance to get to much of the rest of it. But we did make up for it the next week.

mi csa su csa: week 5

From the farm share in week 5:

Dragon Tongue Beans
Carrots
Zucchini
Cucumber
Potatoes
Lettuce
Onion
Garlic
Mixed Tomatoes
Basil

We still had quite a few vegetables left over from the week before after not being home for most of the week, so when the new batch came in I roasted most of the vegetables from the week before, including carrots, turnips, lots of zucchini and onions from this week. The onions are so good they always go into meals quickly. I also peeled the rest of the previous few weeks' carrots just to have as a snack with some salad dressing. The only week 4 items I ended up starting week 5 with were the new potatoes, a ton of cucumbers and some beans.

By the end of week 5 I still had week 4's leftovers and nearly all of week 5's batch. Unfortunately the cucumbers and the beans didn't make it to the end of week 5 before going bad. I also only got through about half the basil before it turned, but I also grow my own, so it wasn't a huge loss.

The first day I made a salad of the lettuce, basil, tomatoes and some mozzarella with balsamic vinegar - good but maybe one too many items. I also used some of the tomatoes with my own basil, wrapped up in sliced Italian meat - a great little appetizer.

At the end of the week it was time to see if we could use up as much as we could before the next share comes in, and we made a perfect meal to do that. We started with a quick pickle to use up some cucumbers, though we found the previous week's batch had rotted already, but we still had plenty, and got to use the farm fresh garlic in it too. We refrigerated them until dinner and they turned out perfectly. We roasted both the new potatoes from last week and this week's red potatoes, which gave us the chance to really see the different flavor profiles of both. The new potatoes far outshined the red, though they are both very delicious. We also sliced up the rest of the tomatoes and salted them for a simple side dish. We rounded out all our great veggies with a perfectly cooked porterhouse from our meat farm share.

We got through just about everything this week, with just zucchini and carrots to go, and I should be able to find a good use for both at the beginning of next week.

mi csa su csa: week 4

From the farm share in week 4:

butter lettuce
new potatoes
zucchini
green beans
peas
carrots
turnips
green onions
cucumbers

I started the week with the peas, shelling them into mac and cheese and tossed with some of last week's scallions.

Next up was our favorite pork chop and peaches dish, this time with fresh peaches, which improved the dish greatly. We roasted the new potatoes with olive oil and salt—and they were some of the best potatoes we've ever made, even though we've made them the way dozens of times.

mi csa su csa: week 3

The third week of farm-y goodness includes:

zucchini
scallions
sugar peas
cucumbers
carrots
bok choy
lettuce mix
kale

There's always one item to catch up on from the week before and this week it was cucumbers, especially since we got two more in this week's farm share. So I made one of favorite childhood foods: chopped cucumbers in sour cream. Literally add some sugar to those two ingredients and you have a dish I can snack on for days.

I also went straight for the kale on night one. Mostly because it's not my favorite and likely to be one of the first things to go bad if I don't eat it right away. Also it was easy enough to just throw it in a frying pan with some sliced leftover kielbasa and have a meal ready to go in 15 minutes.

Been a little slow getting around to everything this week. Ate a bit of the lettuce mix, but wasn't as into it this week. Tossed the bok choy, zucchini and shucked the peas into a stir fry, which was probably a little overpowered by the sauce we used, but the bok choy was clearly very tasty. Saving the carrots to make a big batch of carrot latkes when we get more carrots next week. Scallions might be the only thing that don't make it into anything.

mi csa su csa: week 2

The farm freshness continues in week 2 with:

carrots
spinach
scallions
beets
cucumbers
broccoli
zucchini
arugula

Since I didn't get to the arugula last week I thought I'd start there first with a steak salad. Here's the original recipe, though it's just as good when you just pan fry the steak, reduce some balsamic and brown sugar in the pan and sprinkle in whatever cheese you've got. And this was definitely the best arugula I've ever had.

I roasted the broccoli the first night we got it, just to make sure it didn't go bad. Mid-week we defrosted some bone-in pork chops from the farm and used our steak method to cook them: a hot cast-iron pan, oiled with bacon fat and salt and peppered chops, 3 minutes a side and 6 minutes in a 400 degree oven. We then used the cast iron pan to cook down the spinach using the drippings and half a lemon to flavor the spinach. We also reheated the broccoli in the pan as the spinach finished cooking. It was all delicious!

With so much ground beef and ground pork from the farm a meatloaf seemed in order. We used our usual meatloaf recipe, though we exchanged the usual dried italian herbs with fresh parsley, oregano, thyme and basil (the rest is chopped onion, parmesan cheese, ketchup, mustard, tabasco steak sauce, eggs, salt, pepper and garlic powder). We also roasted slices of this week's zucchini and last week's peas with a little olive oil, salt and pepper for half the duration while the meatloaf cooked for 60 minutes at 400 degrees. It was the best meatloaf we've ever made.

For lunch we grilled up some kielbasa and hot dogs along with the scallions, which is my favorite scallion preparation.

We had a ton of leftover meatloaf, so we ate the leftovers with roasted carrots, golden beets and some mushrooms. We topped the mushrooms with salt and pepper, the carrots with thyme and the beets with dill - all very tasty, and a good way to use up nearly all of the rest of the vegetables.

mi csa su csa: week 1

We're doing both a meat CSA and a veggie CSA this year, both for the first time. The meat CSA is year round and we're on month 2, but the veggies just started. Since we're getting vegetables we don't usually eat, I thought I'd keep a record of what we've created with them.

Week 1:
scapes
broccoli
zucchini
turnips
arugula
red leaf lettuce
peas

First up: broccoli, a couple scapes and mushrooms pan fried with leftover chicken and homemade chicken broth.

I ate most of the lettuce simply dressed with a tangerine dressing—though I didn't get through all of it.

The zucchini made up the meat of a delicious Persian Kuku Kadoo recipe from Saveur, which we served with roasted turnips, scapes and carrots we seasoned with fresh dill from our herb garden.

The arugula didn't make it, but the peas look like they'll still be good enough to eat in week 2.

spring pork chops...anytime

Fresh peaches this spring have been delicious, so they haven't been lasting long enough around our house to make it into an actual dish before being picked up and just eaten as is. This is a great dish because it uses frozen peaches, which you can get any time of the year. The flavors in this dish come together beautifully, sweet and savory all at once. We served it with roasted asparagus and fried plantains.

3-4 (1-inch-thick) pork chops
2 tablespoons olive oil
2 tablespoons butter
1/2 cup thinly sliced shallots
1-2 teaspoons finely chopped thyme
1/4 cup brandy
1 (10-ounce) bag frozen peaches, thawed
1/3 cup peach preserves

Sprinkle pork chops on both sides with 1 teaspoon salt and 1/2 teaspoon pepper (total) and coat lightly with olive oil.

Heat 12-inch cast iron skillet in oven for 10 minutes at 500 degrees, bring pan back to the stove top and cook pork chops over high heat, turning once, until browned, 3 minutes on each side. Return pan with pork chops to 350 degree oven for 6 minutes, until cooked through. Transfer to a platter and keep warm, loosely covered with foil.

Return skillet to stove top. Heat butter in skillet over medium heat until foam subsides, then cook shallots with thyme, stirring occasionally, until tender and golden-brown, about 5 minutes.

Add 1/4 cup brandy to skillet, then cook over medium heat, scraping bottom of skillet to loosen brown bits. Add peaches, preserves, and 1/4 teaspoon each of salt and pepper and any meat juices from platter. Nestle pork chops in the sauce and cook, until peaches are tender and juicy, about 3 minutes. Plate pork chops and spoon sauce over chops.

Adapted from epicurious.com

smoked mozzarella non-pizza

I crave pizza all the time, but feel pretty terrible after eating a pile of nothing but carbs, cheese and grease. This recipe, which I threw together with a few vegetables and stuff I had on hand, fills the pizza craving without the heaviness. I would recommend making double the recipe below if you want any leftovers.

Ingredients:
1 red pepper
1 yellow pepper
1 zucchini
half a ball of smoked mozzarella
parmesan cheese
romano cheese
6 fresh basil leaves
spaghetti sauce

Directions:
Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Cut vegetables into bite-sized pieces. Toss with olive oil, salt and pepper. Spread evenly on baking sheet. Roast in oven for 30 minutes. Remove baking sheet from oven and sprinkle with parmesan and romano cheeses. Top with slices of smoked mozzarella and sprinkle with fresh basil leaves. Roast in oven 10 minutes.

Spread a layer of warmed spaghetti sauce on a plate and top with the roasted vegetables and cheese.

cheesy chewy brazilian bread

These little pieces of squishy bread are amazing! Like a combo of warm and chewy crescent rolls and croissants.

Ingredients:

1 egg

1/3 cup olive oil

2/3 cup milk

Scant 1 1/2 cups tapioca flour

1/2 cup (packed) grated queso fresco

1 teaspoon of salt (or more to taste)

Directions:

Preheat oven to 400°F. Grease a mini-muffin tin. Put all of the ingredients into a blender and pulse until smooth. You may need to use a spatula to scrape down the sides of the blender so that everything gets blended well. At this point you can store the batter in the refrigerator for up to a week.

Bake in the oven for 15-20 minutes, until all puffy and just lightly browned. Remove from oven and let cool on a rack for a few minutes.

Eat while warm or save to reheat later.

Adapted from Simply Recipes