Hail, CSA basket #8 and Beet Salad

On Friday last week, we received the news that our CSA farm had a massive hail storm - to the extent that Donna and Lyn lost windows on both the house and garage, and the entire farm looked like you'd cut everything with a mower. Our veggie crop was leveled. Check out their farm blog for some pictures: harmony-farm.blogspot.com.

I talked to Lyn at the Farmer's Market when I picked up our basket, and he talked about getting in to replant what crops they could (and what would still produce for them before frost). So, all hope is not lost, but I have a feeling that we won't be getting any tomatoes or squash this year. =(

It makes me sad. I'm sad partly because I grew up on a farm and I know how devastating hail can be. I'm also sad because they've been having a fantastic garden season, and we as the lucky consumers are getting to eat all of the tasty results! Fortunately, for us, they had picked some crops before the hail, and in our weekly basket we received yellow squash, cucumber, beets, spotted beans, lots and lots of carrots, and of course, eggs.

The beets are absolutely delicious. I'm not sad that one of the crops they're hoping to replant are beets... Mmm. I'll be eating lots and lots of beet salad this summer:

Roasted beet salad with goat cheese

2-3 large beets
2 oz goat cheese
A drizzle of olive oil, per serving
Freshly cracked salt and pepper, to taste

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Trim the leafy tops and scraggly root ends from the beets. Do not peel! Wrap each beet in aluminum foil, and place in the warm oven. Bake for 30 minutes to an hour, depending on how large the beets are. When you can pierce the beets easily with a skewer or fork, they're done. Remove them from the oven and vent their aluminum foil packets slightly. As soon as the beets are cool enough to handle, use paper towels and/or a paring knife to slide the skins off. Beets will happily color everything they touch a bright red. I held the beet with one paper towel, and sloughed off the skins with another to keep from staining my fingers too much!

Once your beets are peeled, slice them into rounds about 1/4-inch thick. (They will stain your cutting board too. I wrapped mine in plastic wrap.) Distribute the beets among 2-3 plates. Crumble some goat cheese on each plate, making sure each slice of beet has a little goat cheese piled on it. Drizzle each plate with a flavorful olive oil, and finish with freshly cracked salt and pepper.

We'll see what this Saturday brings for our next basket. I don't mind just getting to eat eggs, because their eggs are amazingly good compared to store bought eggs. Still, I like the variety we get every week when the mid-summer veggies are in full swing. In the meantime, I have more beets and carrots to roast...

Caprese Pasta Salad

We're going over to a friend's tonight for grilling, delicious food, wine and good conversation. I was asked to bring a salad to the party, but I didn't want to bring my old stand-by rotini noodle pasta salad. It's delicious, but boring. Rob and I have been eating whole-wheat tortellini from Safeway with olive oil, salt, pepper and grated romano cheese. I decided to do a riff on that simple pasta dish:

Caprese Pasta Salad

18 oz whole-wheat tortellini (fresh, in the refrigerator section)
3 sprigs basil
1 pint cherry tomatoes
1/4 c. romano cheese
2-3 good glugs of olive oil (there's no measurement here, just wing it)
salt and pepper to taste

Cook the tortellini to package directions. Rinse in cool water and toss with good olive oil. How much olive oil depends completely on your tastes. I use enough to keep the pasta from sticking together, not enough to drench it or have a bunch running around in the bottom of the bowl. Slice the cherry tomatoes in half and toss with the pasta. Sprinkle in a good amount of romano cheese - I guesstimated it at just shy of 1/4 cup. Salt and pepper to taste. Pick all of the leaves off the basil sprigs, roll them tightly in one cigar-shaped roll, and slice them thinly (chiffonade). Toss with the pasta and tomatoes, refrigerate. Before serving, give everything a good stir and add more olive oil if you want.

Aside -- I'm sure by now, you've figured out that I'm not a photographer. I seriously take all of my food photos with my blackberry in whatever lighting I can get. But, I particularly love how the dish appears to be floating in space on this one. Yay for a black coffee table! =)

CSA basket #7 and Summer Veggie Medley with White Beans

Last week, our CSA basket was a little sparse because the summer veggies weren't quite ready. No more. This week we got potatoes, big beautiful beets, yellow squash and onions! Feeling in need of some greens to fill out the list, I also bought some red chard from another vendor at Farmer's market.

Summer Veggie Medley with White Beans


1 (15 oz) can white kidney beans
1 Tbsp. oil (about)
1 medium yellow squash (or two small ones)
1 medium zucchini
1 small bunch red chard
1 tsp. dried basil
1/4 tsp. red pepper flakes

Rinse and drain the white kidney beans. In a 10-inch skillet, heat the olive oil over medium heat. Add the rinsed beans, basil and red pepper. Stir occasionally while preparing the other vegetables. Slice the zucchini and yellow squash into 1/4-inch thick rings. Cut the stems off the chard and slice those into roughly 1-inch pieces. Add the zucchini, squash and chard stems to the beans with about 1/4 cup of water. Salt and pepper to taste. Put a lid on the pan and simmer for 3-5 minutes, or until the squash is softened slightly. Cut the chard leaves into 1-inch strips. When the squash is softened, toss the chard greens on top of the veggie/bean mix, and return the lid to the pan. Check the chard in about 3 minutes. If the chard is starting to wilt, remove the lid and stir gently until all of the chard is wilted and any remaning liquid is reduced. Serve with grated parmesan and extra freshly ground pepper.

Oh, I also want to offer a word of warning. Pressurized flour can get EVERYWHERE in a kitchen.

For Christmas, we were given a beer bread mix which was cleverly bottled in a liter beer bottle. I thought some good beer bread would be tasty alongside the veggie mix, and decided I should use the mix we had instead of making my own. I preheated the oven, got out a pan, picked the beer I wanted to use... and then I went to open the bread mix bottle. In retrospect, I should have promptly used the bottled mix after Christmas, lest some of the leavening begin to activate. (The bottle was kept in a cupboard next to the stove.) .... Nonetheless, I had no idea that flour would explode like that. The moment I cracked the seal on the bottle a good half the kitchen, and at least half of me, was covered in a fine coating of flour. Some of the mix managed to land in the bowl I had set next to me. The rest of the mix residing in the neck of the bottle was scattered about the kitchen. After several minutes of stunned laughter, I managed to empty out the remaining contents of bread mix into the bowl, scoop any mix off the counters that I could, and promptly clean the rest of the kitchen. By this time, the oven had long preheated. Most of the mix had made it to the bowl, so I used about 10 oz of beer instead of 12 oz and made the bread anyway. It was pretty tasty, and I got the added benefit of a much cleaner kitchen floor. =)

Curried Chickpeas and Spinach and CSA basket #6

I have had an indescribable craving for curry lately. I have no idea what it is. Maybe there was a curry trend on some of the food blogs I was reading. Or, maybe I was just missing eating out at Saigon. Either way, I've had curry on the brain.

I tried to satisfy my craving by ordering Thai chicken curry at Saigon on Friday. Despite the 50 minute wait, all the while thinking I could have made this at home by now, the curry was delicious! But, my cravings didn't stop there...

Saturday, I had decided was a day off. I got up early to fetch the CSA basket (just peas and eggs... it's that turning point in the summer where cold weather crops are done and warm weather crops aren't quite ready yet), and then I read food blogs, and took a nap, and read food blogs, and ... didn't do a damn thing. Sometime around 11:00pm, while Rob was at school, I decided to try a riff on one of the recipes I'd read earlier in the day. I moseyed over to my apartment to fetch the curry powder (Rob's not much of a curry fan, so I was all alone on this one), and then came back to rummage through the cupboards.

The resulting snack was delicious, and I will forever cook chickpeas in this fashion!

Curried Chickpeas and Spinach
Modified from Dinner with Julie's recipe

1 (15 oz) can chickpeas (garbanzo beans)
1 Tbsp. olive oil
1 Tbsp. spicy curry powder (more or less to taste)
3 cloves garlic, peeled and roughly chopped
1/4 cup water
1 cup(ish) packed fresh spinach

Heat an 8-inch skillet on medium heat. Add the olive oil - in a thin layer that completely coats the bottom of the pan. It might not be quite 1 Tbsp, but you want it to coat the pan thinly. When the oil is good and hot, add the drained and rinsed chickpeas. They will sizzle and crackle for a bit, and that's okay. What we're trying to do is mimic roasting the chickpeas - so we want them to get a little color on them and sizzle over the heat. After 2-3 minutes, add the curry powder and the garlic cloves. Stir frequently for 2-3 minutes more so the curry seasoning is well distributed and the garlic doesn't burn. Add 1/4 cup of water and put a lid on the pan. This creates a bit of a sauce as it cooks down helps with nice even coloring. Cook 2-3 minutes more. When the chickpeas have taken on a nutty aroma and are starting to brown, add the fresh spinach and put the lid back on the pan. It takes about a minute to wilt. Stir the spinach in, and voila! You have a tasty and healthy snack.

I attempted to eat the entire can of chickpeas, but I couldn't quite do it. I did get about 2/3 of the way through the delicious nuttiness. The texture of the chickpeas are entirely transformed when you cook them with this method. I've always found chickpeas to be gritty and strangely toothsome. These chickpeas were tender - almost like well-cooked potato tender. They still had the same flavor, and they had a little bit of the familiar tooth, but they were utterly transformed. So much better! I'm definitely trying Julie's method next time and adding a poached egg. I was so enamored by the aroma of this first batch that I couldn't be bothered to poach an egg to go with it. =)

I have already envisioned using this technique with a variety of flavorings, but the curry definitely satisfied my craving. All it cost me was 10-15 minutes standing over a pan, $1 for a can of chickpeas, and maybe $0.50 for the spinach and curry powder. So I spent $2ish for a delicious meal I couldn't finish in one sitting, instead of $12 for a meal I had to wait an hour for and could finish in one sitting. I'm beginning to understand the rationale behind Not Eating Out In New York!

Mediterranean Night

After band rehearsal on Monday, I texted Rob and asked the simple question: "what's for dinner?" It turns out, at 10:00 pm, that's a harder question to answer than I would have thought. Originally, I had the idea of making some of that awesome sweet and sour red cabbage () with pan-fried brats instead of pork chops. I went to the store with that in mind. Rob, however, was thinking Mediterranean. After many text messages, and a hungry shopping trip later, we arrived on a plan ... or so we thought ... pasta, olives, bleu cheese, spinach, maybe some tomatoes or sun-dried tomatoes and a drizzle of olive oil. Simple. What we came up with was a bit different, but delicious nonetheless.

Polenta topped with Tomatoes, Olives, Mushrooms and Spinach
by Erin and Rob

4 oz mushrooms (white or crimini)
1 (6 oz) bag prewashed baby spinach
4-5 fat green olives (I have no idea what kind they are.. think Martini olives, but from the olive bar, not a jar)
1 Tbsp. capers
1 can fire-roasted diced tomatoes
3 Italian sausages
A splash of beer for cooking the sausages

1/2 c. polenta
1.5 c. water
3-4 Tbsp. grated parmesan or asiago cheese
Freshly ground pepper to taste

In a 10-inch skillet, heat about a teaspoon or two of olive oil. Add the sausages (I cooked the whole package of 5), and cook until the bottoms are nicely browned. Flip the sausages and brown the other side. Once both sides are browned, pour in about 3-4 oz of beer and put the lid on. Cook, turning occasionally, until the sausages are done. Meanwhile, wash and slice the mushrooms. Cut the olives in half and slice into half moons. When the sausages are done, remove them from the skillet and set aside to cool. Pour out all but 2 Tbsp of fat/beer from the pan and add the mushrooms. When the mushrooms are browned to your liking, pour in the can of tomatoes and their juice, scraping the bottom of the pan to get all of the good browned bits from the bottom. Add the olives and the capers and simmer for few minutes. Meanwhile, bring the polenta water to a boil in a small sauce pan. Once the water is boiling, pour in the polenta and stir a bit to make sure there aren't any clumps. Simmer until nearly done (I love how polenta burbles like the mud pots at Yellowstone!), then add the cheese and pepper and stir to combine. Slice the cooled sausages and toss in with the tomato sauce. Once the polenta is nearly done, add handfuls of the spinach to the pan, cover and wilt, working in batches if necessary to ensure all of the spinach is incorporated. Remove the lid and simmer until the desired sauce consistency is reached.

Spoon some polenta onto your plate and top with the tomato mixture. Serves 2 hungry people, or serves 2 normal people and leaves enough leftovers for the next dish.

Eggs in Piperade - Mediterranean style
by Erin

Leftovers from the recipe above
2 eggs
Salt and pepper to taste

Preheat the oven to 400F. Coat two 2-cup ramekins with cooking spray. If you have some leftover polenta, break it up and put about 1/4"-1/2" of polenta crumbles at the bottom. Spoon in the tomato sauce until the ramekin is about 3/4 full (or leave about 1/2-inch headspace). Make a well in the tomato sauce and crack in an egg. Add salt and pepper to taste, and bake for 15-20 minutes, or until the egg is set. Serves 2.

Cannellini and Chicken salad with Pepperoncini and Tomatoes

I know the blog has taken a bit of a hiatus. I have four or five posts backlogged, but not completely written, so ... I'll get to it one of these days. =) In the meantime, I wanted to share a new salad recipe that I dramatically modified from one I found on Kalyn's Kitchen.

Cannellini and Chicken salad with Pepperoncini and Tomatoes
Modified significantly from this recipe

1 can white cannellini beans
1 can white meat chicken
4-5 pepperoncini peppers
2 spring onions, white and light green parts sliced
1/3 (about) of a 15.5 oz can diced fire roasted tomatoes, drained

1 Tbsp lemon juice
1 Tbsp pepperoncini juice
1 Tbsp olive oil
1/4 tsp poultry seasoning
1/4 tsp crushed red pepper
3-4 dashes Tobasco sauce
Salt and pepper to taste

Drain and rinse the cannellini beans. Drain the chicken and shred the pieces. Mix all of the salad ingredients together in a quart sized (or larger) lidded bowl. Whisk the dressing ingredients together and pour over the salad. Chill. This is delicious served on a bed of lettuce with some shredded romano or asiago cheese.

CSA baskets #4 and #5

I haven't been keeping up with the CSA basket posts very well. So, here's a condensed post:

Basket #4: spring onions, lettuce, spinach, radishes, a few peas and 2 dozen eggs

Basket #5: lettuce, lots of peas, new red potatoes, and 1 dozen eggs