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.