Switcheroo

Normally I do pretty much all of the cooking in our two-person household, and Roger does most of the cleanup. But, a few months ago Roger had the idea that it would be fun to trade jobs for a week. Though I tend to be a control freak in the kitchen, I agreed that this could be a fun experiment. So, last week was the big week. When I got home from work, I kicked back in the recliner while Roger whipped up his culinary delights. My blissful state disappeared quickly when I realized that the piles of dishes in the sink were now MY responsibility... I think he picked out his recipes based on how many dirty dishes they would create ;)

Monday night: Paglia fieno all boscaiola (straw and hay pasta and fresh wild mushrooms)



This is one of the dishes we made in the Italian cooking class we took a few weeks ago. Here is the original recipe, which we halved. (We also left out the prosciutto.)

4 Tbs unsalted butter
1.5 oz dried porcini plus 1/2 lb fresh wild mushrooms
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 cup brandy (we substituted red wine)
1/4 lb proscuitto, juliened
1.5 cups heavy cream
1 cup grated parmesan
1/2 cup frozen peas, defrosted
1.5 lb fettucine

In a medium-sized skillet, melt the butter and when the foam subsides, add the mushrooms, salt them, and saute the mushrooms for 3-4 minutes until soft. Add proscuitto and saute 1 minute. Add the brandy and deglaze the skillet. Boil the liquid and reduce until almost all of the liquid has evaporated. Stir in the cream, reduce until slightly thickened. Add peas and half the cheese and simmer until cheese is melted.

While sauce is cooking, bring two pots of water to a boil (you only need one if you halve the recipe). Divide pasta between the two pots, and cook until al dente. Drain most of the water, leaving a little in each pot to keep the pasta moist. Toss the pasta with the mushroom sauce and 1/2 cup parmesan cheese. Serve immediately with additional parmesan cheese.

Tuesday night: Rice and beans. These were really good. Scarfed them down in about 5 minutes so we could get out the door to Trivia Night (which our team won!!!).



Wednesday night: We went out to Pizzeria Regina :)

Thursday night: Pasta with goat cheese and tomatoes. This is one of our regular dishes and is pretty easy to throw together at a moment's notice. It's from "365 Ways to Cook Pasta."



Friday night: Fish tacos! I am sorry to say that I failed to take a photo of these, because they were REALLY good. The recipe is from one of the Rachel Ray cookbooks, I think Express Lane Meals.

All in all the great cooking swap was a success, though I was very happy to seize control of the kitchen back on Saturday, when I made stuffed acorn squash (stuffed with leftover rice and beans from Tuesday).



On the side is lightly steamed spinach with craisins. I was going to make a salad but Saturday morning, I was randomly flipping through Yoga Journal at my chiropractor's office and read an article about how you should only eat warm salads when the weather is cold. I think it has something to do with ease of digestion? Sounded a little strange, but I'm all in favor of eating warm foods in winter, so I decided to try it out. It was pretty good!

End of the season

So, Oct. 23 was the last day of our CSA... a sad occasion! But it has been a great season. The last delivery was heavy on root vegetables - here we have some carrots, parsnips, beets and turnips, plus a butternut squash. It was not much fun lugging all that stuff home!



We also got quite a few apples. The apples were so tart that we deemed them inedible unless baked. I made a roasted squash and apple casserole (which I sadly forgot to take a picture of), which we had for dinner one night but could have been a dessert too. Here is the recipe - next time I make it I will probably cut down on the sugar, it really doesn't need that much. The next morning I had the leftovers on top of my oatmeal, which was divine.

I have been bad about taking pictures recently, but here are a couple:

Turnip and parsnip gratin. Doesn't sound all that appealing, but it was really good. The recipe is from Cooking Light.



Pizza! With sliced roasted beets, goat cheese, and a walnut-olive oil spread. Mmmmmm.



Without the CSA, I made a trip to Russo's this weekend to stock up on some produce. Even though it's not all local, they do have a lot of local stuff and the non-local stuff is very high quality. I bought a few more squash, apples, pomegranates (!), and the highlight... brussels sprouts! When we got to the store and I saw the brussels sprouts piled high, I let out a squeal of the sort that, as Catherine observed, most people reserve for sightings of Brad Pitt. :) I roasted my sprouts with some maple syrup, mustard and olive oil, and they were delightful.

Bonus fun: Catherine's post on our donut-making adventure.

Catching up

I have a slew of photos of meals from the past couple of weeks, some of which are so old I'm not sure I remember what they are! But here we go:



On the left is butternut squash risotto, and on the right is roasted brussels sprouts and apples. For the risotto, I followed Rachael Ray's basic recipe, and just added the roasted squash at the end. For the brussels sprouts, I used this recipe from the Boston Globe, but I think there was something wrong with the recipe because it called for an insane amount of vinegar. It came out pretty well but it was not the best brussels sprouts dish I have ever had.



I decided to take advantage of some farm-fresh broccoli to make one of my favorite sandwich combinations: sauteed broccoli, almond butter and soy sauce, on toast. Sooooo good.



Despite appearances, this is not chicken pot pie - it's vegetable pot pie! I LOVE pot pie, mostly because of the crust, but I never get to eat it because it always has chicken or turkey in it. Then I found a recipe for vegetable pot pie in one of my vegan cookbooks, "La Dolce Vegan." It was so good, and probably easier than other pot pie recipes because you just drape a layer of crust on top of the veggies in a square baking dish, instead of shaping it into a real pie crust. This has potatoes, peas, carrots, I think some green peppers (of course) and I forget what else. It was delightful.



I'm not 100 percent sure what this is... I know it has kale, and mushrooms, and it looks like there is some cheese on top? Probably cheddar. I think there is some rice under the veggies, and maybe chickpeas too.... this is something that I made up on the spur of the moment. I was originally planning to make a kale and mushroom salad but decided against it for some reason. However, we got kale again the following week, so I made the salad and it was fantastic. I got the recipe from a web site called the Mushroom Channel, which I really must investigate more thoroughly.



This is another dish that I made up. I roasted some butternut squash and brussels sprouts, then served it over brown rice with a maple-balsamic sauce from "Eat Drink and Be Vegan" - one of my favorite cookbooks. The sauce is fantastic, I use it on all kinds of roasted vegetables and it's also good as a salad dressing.

The CSA offerings have been slightly sparse recently, so I've been supplementing with extra veggies from the store (mostly brussels sprouts and squash). On Saturday we went to the Market Basket in Chelsea, which I just found out is the largest grocery store in New England, so of course I had to check it out. They had butternut squash grown in Massachusetts, which was exciting. They may be appearing on the blog soon, along with a plethora of root vegetables :)

Peppers galore

Some aspect of our bizarre weather this year seems to have led to a bumper crop of peppers. We've been getting green peppers, yellow peppers, red peppers, brown peppers, and some weird-looking multicolored peppers, in ridiculous quantities. These are all from last week:



Confession: I don't even LIKE peppers. Especially raw peppers (unless they are buried in a sandwich, where they do provide a nice crunch). So what on earth am I going to do with all of these? Well, here are a few of my solutions so far:



Beans and rice - a classic. I used pinto beans, brown rice, some leftover salsa, peppers of course, topped with cheddar cheese. I made extra rice and used it the next night to make fried rice. I love this recipe, which is from one of the Moosewood cookbooks - Simple Suppers. I always vary the vegetables based on what I have on hand. This time, along with the obvious ingredient, I added kale and edamame (also both from the farm share).



This frenzy made only a small dent in the pepper pile, so I decided to roast a few of them. This turned out to be pretty simple - it took about 30 minutes in a 450 degree oven.



These don't look all that appealing, but they did make a lovely pizza topping (there's also some farm eggplant and some provolone cheese on that pie). The rest of the roasted peppers are in the fridge waiting to go on sandwiches. Mmmmmm.

Mountains of veggies

The pile of veggies we got this week is really overwhelming - lettuce, collards, potatoes, carrots, peppers, zucchini, summer squash, corn and broccoli. Fortunately many of these are among my favorite vegetables! Friday night I made some pasta with goat cheese and sauteed collard greens (though I could swear that they were actually mislabeled Swiss chard).



Saturday night I tried out a gratin recipe from the New York Times, which I had bookmarked a few weeks ago. This seemed like a good way to use up several veggies at once - corn, peppers (we actually had a two-week-old one that had to be consumed asap), and zucchini. It came out really well. I especially liked the cumin flavor. This could probably be easily adapted to whatever vegetables you have on hand.



Tonight I decided to go even more veggie-dense with vegetable fajitas. For this I sauteed broccoli, another green pepper, and summer squash.



Which turned into:





Buried under the mountain of veggies is a Quorn (fake chicken) cutlet. Those things are surprisingly good! Even though it's a little weird that they are made of some kind of mushroom protein.

Fall festival

With high temperatures in Boston dropping into the 60s this week, it is really starting to feel like fall. I LOVE fall, and one of my favorite things about it is pumpkin! I decided to celebrate the new season by opening a gigantic can of pumpkin (we're talking the 28-ouncer). My first pumpkin creation was pumpkin-peanut risotto, which I made a few nights ago. I actually stumbled across the recipe when I was looking for a recipe for pumpkin-peanut butter cookies (which I still haven't really found, I might have to just make one up). As soon as I saw this recipe I knew I had to make it.



This just tasted like fall. It only needed a cup of pumpkin though, so I have tons more in the fridge now. I think most of it is destined to end up in yogurt or oatmeal....mmmmm. And in further fall celebration, tomorrow I'm going apple picking!

More summer

Tonight I used up what will probably be the last zucchini of the season. I'm glad we got some last week, because my friend Catherine had sent me a zucchini recipe that I really wanted to try - zucchini casserole. Here are her instructions (she adapted the recipe from The Joy of Cooking stuffed zucchini recipe):

sautee 1 cubed onion, minced garlic (i used 3 cloves) and 3 zucchini cut into 1/2" cubes (i used both green zucchini and yellow squash)
season with salt, pepper, and perhaps some tarragon, thyme, or rosemary
sautee until *almost* done - you don't want it to turn to mush in the oven.
pour this mixture into a baking dish and dot with goat cheese.

top with the following mixture:

2 eggs, beaten
1/2 c. grated parmesan
1/3 c. bread crumbs
1/3 c. fresh, chopped parsley
black pepper

sprinkle with olive oil and bake until topping is golden brown and zucchini are very soft.


I left out the parsley and added some leftover sliced tomato. The casserole took about 25 minutes in the oven, and I served it over barley. It was excellent! Thanks for the recipe Catherine! :)



(Catherine also has a blog about her adventures in eating locally - http://somervillelocal.blogspot.com/)

Last gasp of summer

I was surprised this week to see tomatoes, corn and zucchini at the CSA pickup. It seems like now that it's September, we should be moving on to squash, sweet potatoes, and other autumnal veggies. But I'm not complaining! Since summer felt so short, I will happily extend it a little into September. On Friday, the day we got our veggies, I cooked up the corn and tossed it with some orzo, tomatoes, olive oil, lemon juice, blue cheese and basil.



It was very summery! I'm ready to start embracing fall though. Bring on the squash!

Alien vegetables

So, this vegetable did not come from our farm:



This is a yucca, which is pretty darn ugly, but I have heard good things about it so I got one at Russo's a couple of days ago. I decided to make it into yucca fries to go with tonight's dinner. To make the fries, I peeled and sliced the yucca, tossed it with olive oil, salt and pepper, and baked it for about 25 minutes at 400 degrees.



Yucca fries on the left, baked tofu (marinated with maple syrup, sesame oil, soy sauce, mustard, salt and pepper) on the right. There is some ketchup hiding in the back of the plate. The fries were pretty good, though they didn't seem to have tons of flavor. I like pretty much any root vegetable though, so I was happy, especially with ketchup to dip them in. The colors on my plate look so boring! I did have a nice green salad too but forgot to take a picture of it.

For lunch today, I used the other half of the mysterious winter squash to make some soup. First I cut the squash in cubes and steamed it, then sauteed a small red onion in some olive oil and added the squash and some chicken broth. (Yes I know vegetarians are not supposed to eat chicken broth - I'll have to devote another post to this at some point.) Then I blended it up with my immersion blender (the best kitchen appliance ever) and added about a tablespoon of curry powder, some salt and pepper. This particular squash was pretty mild and made a very nice soup. (I also had a sandwich with tofurky, hummus, pesto, cheddar and some veggies but it wasn't particularly photogenic.)

More eggplant!

We got another eggplant this week, so I flipped through another new cookbook for inspiration - "The Vegetable Dishes I Can't Live Without," by Mollie Katzen (who also wrote some of the Moosewood cookbooks). I came across a curry recipe with eggplant that also included green beans, winter squash and tomatoes - all of which we got from the farm this week! It was uncanny. I had some of the other ingredients on hand too (coconut milk, soy sauce) but had to pick up some basil, curry paste, ginger and veggie broth. I served it over brown rice, and the resulting dinner was quite yummy. Now there are tons of leftovers! :)

Eggplant

I'm not a huge fan of eggplant by itself so whenever we get it I try to meld it into a dish with lots of other ingredients. I was looking through a cookbook for inspiration and found a recipe for a rigatoni with eggplant, tomatoes, olives and onions. It was quite delish. I also sprinkled some leftover mozzarella cheese on top:



This recipe was from Jack Bishop's "Complete Italian Vegetarian Cookbook," which I bought used at the Strand last winter but haven't used much yet. It's so big, I think I'm intimidated by it! I should delve deeper into it though, because this eggplant recipe was pretty good.

Greens and beans

I have lots of posts to catch up on this week. On Monday, we had one of my favorite easy weeknight dinners. Saute some greens (spinach or kale work well) and beans with garlic and olive oil, serve over brown rice, drizzle with olive oil and lemon juice, sprinkle with some cheese. This time, I used kale, white beans and gorgonzola cheese.

Summery risotto

Normally I think of risotto as a wintertime dish, but last weekend I decided to make a summery version. We got basil and some delectable cherry tomatoes from the farm, so I made this risotto with fresh mozzarella, tomatoes and basil from Cooking Light. I had never made risotto with any cheese other than parmesan, but the mozzarella was good - nice and creamy. We haven't gotten a lot of tomatoes this year due to the tomato blight, so this was a good way to showcase them.

Week in review

I have been slacking in blogging, but I'm still cooking! Here are some creations of the past week:



This is "tofu parmesan" - tofu coated in beaten eggs and bread crumbs, then baked for about half an hour. It came out pretty well, but didn't have a ton of flavor. The tomato sauce and cheese added lots of flavor though. On the side is some braised greens, which I didn't like that much. We got a huge bag of "braising greens" last week, and I cooked them following this recipe, but they came out very fibrous and not very tasty. That might be partly because I forgot the steaming step, or maybe they needed more seasoning.



This dish is terribly unphotogenic but tasted really good. I followed a Cooking Light recipe that I clipped out recently but I can't find it on their web site, so no link. It's basically a casserole with eggplant, zucchini, cheddar cheese and wild rice. Yummmm.



There are no vegetables in here, just CHOCOLATE and PEANUT BUTTER. I had to make a dessert to bring to a picnic, and originally was going to make brownies. Then I got the idea to make peanut butter brownies, then decided to make them brownie bites using my adorable mini-muffin tin, and voila. I essentially followed this recipe (but used a mix).

We got a new veggie delivery yesterday, and I did not take a group photo but it included corn, tomatoes, kale, carrots, eggplant, soybeans, basil, onions, peaches and canteloupe. Quite a haul. Last night we just had leftovers, but today I made corn and soybean succotash, loosely following this recipe. (I left out the red bell pepper and garlic.) Fresh corn is SO good. We didn't get a huge amount of soybeans from the farm, so I threw in some frozen ones as well.



And I had to take a picture of this omelet I made this morning, since it is the first omelet I can remember making that actually vaguely resembles an omelet and not scrambled eggs with vegetables.



I just need to make sure I let the eggs cook long enough before trying to flip it. This is the same problem I always have with pancakes too, but I am gradually improving.

Broccoli fiesta

Last year, the broccoli patch at our farm got flooded, washing away most of the broccoli crop. Of all the veggies, my favorite ones had to get flooded! But so far this year, we have gotten broccoli three or four times. This week, I decided to make a broccoli and corn salad, since we also got four ears of corn. This was one of those dishes that I turned over in my mind for a day or so before making it, and my visions became more and more elaborate. My first thought was to mix the broccoli and corn together with some chickpeas and add soy sauce for a nice Asian flavor. Then, after we had lemon salad dressing on Friday night, I thought I might use that instead of soy sauce. But, I forgot to save the extra dressing and we had no more lemons. But... we did have a lime! This took me in a new direction - cumin-lime-olive oil dressing, with black beans instead of chick peas. That's what I ended up doing. This is one medium sized head of broccoli, kernels from four ears of corn, one can of black beans, and about half a cup of leftover brown rice. The dressing is 3-4 tablespoons of olive oil, about a teaspoon of cumin, and juice from half a lime.



We snuck two small Tupperware containers of this into the movie theater yesterday, since we went around lunchtime and I knew the movie (Julie and Julia) would make me hungry. The movie was great, and so was the salad.

So many veggies!

Just look at all of this:




Friday is CSA pickup day, so we are inundated with veggies (and fruit). What you see in the photos is the full share - we are splitting it with a friend who is out of town right now, so we are "babysitting" his veggies until he gets back. I don't know how we will eat even half of this. Well, actually I'm sure we can :)

Generally my philosophy when planning meals based on the CSA share is to use the veggies most likely to spoil/wilt first. So, last night's dinner featured lettuce. To make it a more substantial meal, I topped the salad with salmon (Trader Joe's canned wild Alaska) and brown rice. There are also some dried cranberries and feta cheese tossed in there, and a dressing I made from olive oil, lemon juice, salt and pepper. It doesn't look all that pretty, but it was very tasty. On the side, we had some green/yellow beans that I sauteed with garlic, olive oil and dill. (The yellow beans were leftover from last week so they were a priority to be eaten.)

No veggies here...

...just lots of fruit! Normally I am an oatmeal for breakfast kind of girl, through and through, but lately it's been way too hot for a hot breakfast. Luckily I discovered the fabulousness of the yogurt parfait. This lovely concoction has nonfat French vanilla yogurt (Stonyfield Farm), a banana, handful of blueberries, Kashi GoLean Crunch cereal and some homemade granola. Topped with the secret ingredients that really MAKE this dish: maple syrup and shredded coconut (unsweetened). SO good.

Peachy

Dinner tonight wasn't all that exciting, but I wanted to post a photo because I finally figured out how to get non-horrible photos. The "macro" setting, whatever that is, must be ON for close-up shots. So here is a lovely photo of my salad: CSA lettuce, Trader Joe's blueberries, walnuts, feta cheese, and Newman's olive oil and vinegar dressing.



And just for the heck of it, a photo of one of the peaches we got from our farm. These weren't actually the greatest peaches, but they look pretty!

Sage

Tonight's dinner was simple but yummy: Annie's mac and cheese, doctored up with some roasted farm veggies - summer squash, purple carrots, purple pepper and onion. I roasted the veggies with fresh sage, also from the farm. Most weeks the CSA gives us a choice of herbs, and it's usually basil or cilantro, sometimes dill or rosemary or thyme, but this is the first time I've seen sage there. I love sage but normally just use it with roasted butternut squash, which is obviously not in season, so I decided to toss it in with some summer veggies. It worked really well. I used about 15 sage leaves, chopped, and roasted everything (plus olive oil, salt and pepper), for about 30 minutes, then mixed it in with the mac and cheese.



This whole process massively overheated the kitchen, so we were forced into the living room to actually consume dinner. Why do I insist on using the oven AND stove when it is 90 degrees out??

P.S. A fun fact from "In Defense of Food," which I am reading now: The average American spends only half an hour a day preparing food. Yikes. It sometimes takes me that long just to pack my lunch (and snacks!) for the following day. Which I admit is a little ridiculous....

Ratatouille and blueberries

It happened that this week we got all of the veggies necessary for ratatouille, which I haven't made since last summer. Check these out (I love the purple pepper!):



After much chopping and sauteeing, the veggies were transformed into this:



I loosely followed this recipe from Rachael Ray, but instead of putting the ratatouille into wraps I was lazy and served it over whole wheat couscous, with goat cheese crumbled on top.

After dinner, we had some friends over for Blueberry Fest '09, which I devised as a way to use up some of the ridiculous amount of blueberries we picked last weekend. I made blueberry crisp, blueberry-lemon cheesecake squares and blueberry daquiris (!!!). There may have also been some blueberry beer :) I forgot to photograph anything except for the cheesecake squares:



These were probably the most popular item of the evening. The blueberries we picked are almost gone, but I bought two more pounds at Trader Joe's yesterday (they were on sale - I couldn't resist). Trying to decide if I have the energy to try to make blueberry jam or if I should just toss them in the freezer...

Purple haze

One of my favorite new vegetables I've discovered through my CSA is purple carrots. (Yes purple is my favorite color.) They taste about the same as regular orange carrots, but are a little less sweet. I was very excited to get them today because I saw a recipe on Smitten Kitchen a couple of weeks ago for roasted carrot and avocado salad and have been dying to try it ever since. Here are the carrots, pre-roasting:




I roasted the carrots with some olive oil, cumin, salt and pepper for about 30 minutes. Once done, I added about 1/4 of a sliced avocado and squeezed on a little lemon juice. The sweet roasted carrots and cool creamy avocado were really a nice combination. The original recipe is here.



Sorry for the blurry photos - I should really learn to take better photos if I am going to be a good food blogger! :)