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.