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.

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.

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. :-(

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.

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.

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.