Friday, September 30, 2011

Tortellini with Eggplant & Roasted Tomato Sauce

Since the eggplant we got had already been split in half and was starting to turn brown, I thought I should deal with that first. Plus I've still got the last dregs of cold fatigue and this didn't require much effort...

Cubed the 1/2 eggplant and sauteed it in olive oil. There was quite a bit so I saved about half of that for...something else. Then I added some chopped garlic, hot pepper flakes, and some of the roasted tomato sauce I made a couple weeks ago and froze. Had that over cheese tortellini with some spicy bush basil from our garden, and parmesan.


'Twas good, but I'm already hungry again! Hmm.

Week 17: Kohlrabi!

Joanna has already provided a lovely pic of this week's veggies! I'll be going to pick these up shortly:


Acorn squash, kohlrabi (!), turnips, broccoli, eggplant, poblanos, bok choy & sweet potatoes.

Tuesday, September 27, 2011

Roasted Veggie Melange II

This was a variation of a dish I made a couple months ago:

Cubed a large red potato, the rest of our eggplant, and the baby turnips. Added half a red onion and tossed this with olive oil, rosemary, smoked paprika, salt & pepper. Spread this out on a baking sheet and roasted at 400 for about 40 minutes. Could have done it for less time; the eggplant got pretty done!


On a separate pan, I roasted two chopped tomatoes (thought about using some of the roasted tomato sauce I made and froze, but our tomatoes from this week were already starting to get bad spots) and a can of chickpeas, drained and rinsed.


Combined these two and topped with feta cheese. Would have been nice with some fresh basil, but that died over the weekend. A little more sauciness would have been good, but the taste was nice and this was super easy...oven does all the work.

Monday, September 26, 2011

Week 16: Too tired for pictures

It's been an insane stretch of days that's finally catching up with me and I'm coming down with a cold...bleah. We didn't get to do much with the veggies we got last Thursday. rob made a breakfast casserole that had some eggplant in it (very good!) and I made some sauteed chard tonight, but we've been eating out (and mostly poorly) through the last few days of gig marathon.

As best I can remember, besides the chard and eggplant, we got some small sweet potatoes, some basil which has already turned brown, green peppers, baby turnips, another spaghetti squash which we left with Sharif & Joanna 'cause we haven't used our last one (and that's a tough one to split in half), and some tomatoes.

But right now I'm mostly consuming tea and Nyquil. :-(

Monday, September 19, 2011

Sweet Potato - Black Bean Chili

 

From our CSA veggies, I used the giant sweet potato, lots of garlic, and a green pepper. Also onion, fire-roasted diced tomatoes, black beans, chipotles in adobo sauce (used 2 peppers, but 1 would have been enough - it was plenty spicy!), tomato paste, a little maple syrup, lots of cilantro, and for spices--cumin, paprika and cinnamon.

Sauteed the veggies, added everything else (cilantro in at the end) and simmered for 30 minutes.


Plus plenty of sour cream to tame the heat! It was good though.

Friday, September 16, 2011

Roasted Tomato Sauce; Herb Roasted Chicken w/Root Veggies & Sauteed Chard

Finally, there's a chill in the air -- oven-usin' weather!

Time to tackle these tough tomatoes.

I thought maybe oven-roasting them would concentrate the flavor, and deal with the fact that they're not stellar tomatoes. So I made a roasted tomato sauce, to use at some future point.


Halved & seeded the tomatoes (they actually don't look bad here, but some of them were pretty hard) and put them on a baking sheet. Somehow we have 5 heads of garlic in the kitchen, 3 of which I think are from the CSA. So I peeled cloves from one head and threw them on here too. Olive oil, salt & pepper, and roasted at 350 for 1 hour:


Then I pureed this in a blender. Sauteed an onion and added the puree to that:


Success! I froze most of this.

So everyone else in the house is out of town or otherwise gone. It's a little ridiculous that I made this dinner just for myself, but I was really craving roast chicken, and we have a ton of potatoes (this recipe didn't even use all of them).


Cubed a mixture of red & white potatoes and celery root. Another head of peeled garlic cloves, lots of fresh thyme & rosemary, olive oil, salt & pepper. Then I seasoned some chicken thighs with more of the fresh herbs.


Root veggie mixture went on a baking pan, chicken thighs on top (drizzled with more oil), and a lemon slice on each. Roasted these at 375 for a little under an hour, then broiled for a few minutes to crisp the chicken skin.


Also sauteed the rainbow chard, including stems, with some garlic & lemon juice.


Excellent dinner! And plenty of leftovers.

Thursday, September 15, 2011

Week 15: more good stuff; baby eggplant & bacon pasta

Methinks the harvest is back! Lots of good stuff came this week:


Baby eggplant, green pepper, potatoes, thyme, squash, rainbow chard, plum tomatoes, and a giant sweet potato. We also got more celeriac--Joanna & Sharif kept it as we still have one from last week.

Once again the tomatoes are unripe and sad looking. I've had last week's tomatoes ripening in a paper bag, but they only seem to be getting bad spots and not ripening. Ah well.

I whipped this up tonight for a quick dinner:


Crisped up some diced bacon, sliced 3 of the baby eggplant and sauteed those in the drippings, garlic, red pepper, pasta + cheese. Tasty.

Tuesday, September 13, 2011

Yellow Watermelon!

Finally cracked open the small watermelon. I had a feeling it might be yellow inside, and...I was right!


It was a little less juicy then regular watermelon and no real discernible flavor...not bad, but kinda fun. Might be good in a salsa or something but there wasn't much there...this little dish was half the melon!

I'm looking forward to the next box of stuff as there really wasn't much to work with this week for meals. Still waiting for those tomatoes to ripen. Hopefully the weather's been favorable, and maybe we'll start to see some fall harvest goodness.

Saturday, September 10, 2011

Green Beans with Purple Basil; Potato Buttermilk Soup

Green beans with purple basil:


I also added "roman beans" for some protein. White beans probably would have been prettier...the picture on the can of these had a nice marbled appearance, but they really just looked like pinto beans.

Anyway, I boiled the green beans til just tender. Sauteed garlic and mushrooms, then added the two kinds of beans, lemon juice and chopped purple basil. Which I really had to revive in an ice bath...the herbs we're getting are dying pretty quickly.

I'd bought a container of buttermilk last week to make the biscuits, and most of it was left. So I made chocolate chip buttermilk muffins, and this soup. Still didn't get rid of all of it!


Pretty easy...sauteed onions and garlic, added chopped red potatoes, a box of vegetable broth, some fresh rosemary, and cooked until the potatoes were done. Mashed some of them in the pot to thicken it, then added about a cup and a half of buttermilk (I tempered the buttermilk by adding some of the hot soup to it first, so it wouldn't curdle).

Never actually used buttermilk like this before, but it was pretty good. Added creaminess without a lot of fat, and a little tangy flavor like sour cream.

Friday, September 9, 2011

Week 14: Celeriac & Friends

New stuff this week:


Purple basil, green beans, and...celeriac!

Although rob apparently used half of the celeriac in a veggie lasagna...so I don't have to worry about what the heck to do with it! The remaining one goes to Joanna & Sharif.

We also got potatoes, garlic, lettuce, a "personal-size" watermelon (phew)...and some sad, unripe plum tomatoes.


Not sure what to do with these guys. They're not quite "green" for fryin', but they'll probably never get deliciously ripe--they sort of look even worse than dead-of-winter supermarket tomatoes. I'm guessing the massively bad weather the last couple weeks is to blame. While I'm sad not to be eating delicious heirloom tomato salads, part of supporting the CSA is sharing the good and bad along with the farm. I'm sure they're probably hurting from the weather--and I'm still glad to be giving a local farm my produce money, rather than buying probably-genetically-modified things shipped from far away.

Monday, September 5, 2011

Mac & cheese with bacon, tomato & roasted garlic

Trying not to succumb to food coma after this.


- Browned 3 strips of bacon, chopped
- Sauteed onion in the drippings, then added 3 cloves of roasted garlic (made earlier)
- Stirred in flour & milk to make a white sauce, plus various spices
- Added grated cheddar & colby jack
- 1/2 box of pasta
- Stirred in bacon bits & 1 chopped tomato (tomatoes still weren't that ripe, but figured they'd be fine in this)
- Topped with bread crumbs & parmesan & baked for 15 minutes

Saturday, September 3, 2011

Pasta and Pesto with Potatoes & Green Beans

I had to supplement the sad-looking basil with some from our garden, which is also sort of on its last leg. Included some of the parsley too, thinking that it would make the pesto stay green longer (didn't really happen). And also used roasted garlic and walnuts instead of raw garlic and pine nuts. I'm bringing this to a potluck, so I thought maybe the mellow garlic flavor would be appreciated!

This recipe is from Marcella Hazan's "Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking," which is a great Italian food bible. The combination sounds a little odd, but her introduction says "When serving pesto over spaghetti or noodles, the full Genoese treatment calls for the addition of boiled new potatoes and green beans. When all the components are right, there is no single dish more delicious in the entire Italian pasta repertory."

I can't really boast that mine qualifies for that praise...I used frozen green beans from Trader Joe's, and besides the other bastardizations of the pesto recipe, I also used the *gasp* parmesan from a green can. Generally I'm a bit of a Parmesan snob...I like the real stuff...but we had the big can sitting around.

However this is still pretty decent, and made good use of 4 things from the CSA box!


Friday, September 2, 2011

Week 13: Scallion-Cheddar Biscuits, Stuffed Baby Peppers

Thank god, no melon this week! Nothing particularly stellar though...I'm guessing maybe the hurricane last week forced early pickings of things, or maybe some crops were damaged.

We got some large tomatoes, but they're not particularly ripe. Red potatoes, onions, lots of green onions, garlic, lettuce, parsley, lemon basil, and some more of those baby orange peppers.

With the some of the green onions, I made Cheddar Scallion Drop Biscuits. What's the difference between a scallion and a green onion? I dunno. But these were good.


I finally made the stuffed baby peppers (just 4 of 'em!)


The filling is ricotta, feta, garlic and "spicy bush basil" from our garden. Baked these at 400 for about 20 minutes.

I also roasted a head of garlic which I'll use in pesto instead of raw garlic. Going to a potluck tomorrow and have plans for that. The herbs just aren't traveling well from the farm, but hopefully pureed in pesto won't make much difference.