Shrimp Tacos

Ok, one more post tonight.  I made shrimp tacos using the onions from this week's box.  Here's the mise:

Yes, don't judge me, I used a package of Rick Bayless' Frontera Key Lime Taco Skillet Sauce.  That ish is delicious, dammit. Add some beautiful onions from the Guilford College Farm, a poblano pepper and some shrimp it's a super fast dinner.  I add avocado and queso fresco, but other than that it's pretty much the recipe on the back of the package...saute some onion and pepper, then the shrimp, then add the sauce.

And it will make good leftovers too!

Week 4...in which I make excuses...

Yikes!  I got behind. Well, I basically was eating a bunch of salads so nothing super interesting was happening in the kitchen.  I also put lettuce on some sandwiches. What can I say, I'm just wildly creative.  I realized tonight that I hadn't even taken a beauty shot of the week 4 box.  [hangs head in shame].  Here's what was in it:

• 1 crown broccoli
• 1 crown cauliflower
• 1 head cabbage
• 1 bunch beets
• 1 pound salad mix
• 1 pound kale
• 1 pound collards
• 1 bunch onions
• 1"zippy" onion flower garnish 
• not listed in note: small bag of peas in the shell

So, catching up, did I make anything interesting last week?
Well, I made another pretty salad:

It's pork tenderloin in the same salad I posted here. Same marinade too.  Tasty.

I also roasted some veggies - we got a head of cauliflower in the box this week.  I didn't look exactly like the cauliflower you see in the store - Nick explained in his note that it was slightly yellow and more spread out b/c they don't rubber band the leaves over the crown to keep the sun off. It was still tasty though...I cut it up and threw it in the salad spinner to wash it off:

By the way - if you're in a CSA and you don't own a salad spinner, you should go out and get one now (really...get online  now, here's a link).  It's the fastest way to wash and dry veggies.  Let me edit that - do you eat veggies and/or salad?  Get a damn spinner!  Fortunately the Guilford College farm washes all the bagged salad greens before we get them - I think they give the rest of the produce a rinse  but I like to wash it.  Anyway, after washing and drying I added a couple of tablespoons of olive oil, salt and pepper and spread it out on a baking sheet.  Roasted it a 425°F for 25 minutes and it looks like this:

Nicely tender and crunchy all at the same time.  I served it with some grilled chicken thighs I had made using the rub from this recipe for Pulled Chicken from Cooking Light.  I never make the whole recipe, I just make the rub from the first part and use it on grilled chicken.  I usually melt some swiss, mozzarella or provelone on the chicken and use it in an sandwich, but this time I skipped the bread and served it on some salad greens (because I might still have some from last week).

Yummy.  Only a few more greens to go....(oh, and the beets....they are still waiting for their moment.  But we got them.).
 

Week 3 - the beets

Ack!  Keeping up with this blogging thing is a challenge.  I feel like I've done a lot of really boring stuff with the box this past week, for example - I made a salad with all the greens or I put x in a fritatta.  So, sorry for being boring.  But, I missed one recipe last week that I really enjoy and want to catch folks up on, and also let you know what we got in week 3 and  cool recipe that used up a ton of greens.

Week 3 box:
1.5 lbs broccoli
1 bunch garlic scapes
1 bunch mustard greens
1 bunch turnips
1 lb salad mix (may be spicy? not sure yet)
1 head cabbage
1 bunch swiss chard
1 head lettuce (looks like green leaf lettuce)
1 bunch beets

Gorgeous photo:

Once again, the beets and turnips come with the greens attached which I saved and added to the greens from last week I haven't done anything with yet. No pressure.

So the recipe I made last week that's awesome .... from Skinnytaste https://www.skinnytaste.com/asian-chicken-lettuce-wraps/

Couple of things I change up - I usually put in more water chestnuts (because you might as well use the whole can) and more shitake mushrooms (b/c they are tasty).  I also sub in a tsp or so of gochuchang for the pepper in the main recipe and the Siracha in the sauce.  If you've never had gochuchang it's a great ingredient to get to know, spicy and sweet and keeps forever in the fridge.  The other thing I change is to serve it on a bed of chopped lettuce rather than a wrap (b/c they just fall apart and are hard to eat).  Didn't take a pic of assembly, but here's the final product:

oh.  So I didn't take a picture.  Imagine if you will, a mixture of sauteed chicken, water chestnuts, and shitakes on top of some gorgeous green salad.  With rice.  Not beautiful but delicious.  Next time (because I'll make it again before this challenge is over) I'll remember to take a  pic.

Last night I made a recipe called "Garden Greens Pasta" http://www.cookinglight.com/recipes/garden-greens-pasta but I made a few changes.

1.  I used spinach  (last week's box, yay!) as well as changing up the second green, kale, for chard since surprisingly, there was NO KALE in this week's box (I know, right?).
2.   I subbed 2 tablespoons of toasted pine nuts for the walnuts
3.   I added some parmesan (about 2 ounces) because the recipe seemed to be screaming for it. 
4.   I only used 1 tbs of olive oil because 3 seemed like A LOT. 
5.   I used penne instead of spaghetti  

Here's my mise en place. I subbed garlic scapes for some of the garlic.

Once again not to many photos of the process, but here's the finished dish (minus the cheese for once!)

The verdict?  Pretty tasty, but the greens give my teeth that furry feeling that tells me they are underdone (to my taste). I'll cook them longer next time.  And the pine nuts and cheese were an excellent addition.

Oh, and the title of this post - well this week plus last week?  We've got the beets.

Slowly but surely...

Last night, pizza again.  I found this recipe for Kale Pizza here.  Since I had two big bunches of greens staring at me, along with a ball of premade pizza dough (from Saturday's post  - it gets better if it sits in the fridge for a couple of days, you can also freeze it) I thought this would be a good way to go.

The recipe is from Kenji Lopez-Alt of Serious Eats.  He's known for his meticulous work on developing recipes, sort of an Alton Brown meets Cook's Illustrated on steriods.  I had to adapt the recipe a bit, but the two main ideas I used were:

1.  Pre-cook the pizza w/ cheese for about 5 minutes, then add the kale and cook for another 5-7 minutes.  This means the kale doesn't burn before the pizza cooks.
2. Massage the roughly chopped kale for a few minutes with olive oil, salt and pepper to soften it up.

Kale Pizza  (adapted from Charred Kale Pizza with Garlic)
Ingredients
1/2 recipe of pizza dough (from this post)
4-7 oz  roughly chopped kale
3 tbs olive oil, divided
4 oz shredded mozzarella cheese (about 1 cup)
2 oz shredded gruyere cheese (about 1/2 cup)
2 cloves garlic
salt and pepper

1.  Preheat oven with pizza stone on bottom rack to 500°F
2. Remove the stems and roughly chop the kale (you'll have between 4-7 oz, about 5-8 cups).
3. Put the kale in an salad spinner, wash w/ 2 changes of water and spin dry.
4. Drizzle 1 tbs olive oil over the kale, season with salt and pepper, and massage/rub the kale until it is complete coated with oil.  Set aside.
5. Peel and slice the garlic cloves thinly.  Place in a small bowl or ramekin that is microwave safe and add 2 tbs of olive oil.  Cook in the microwave for 30 seconds to soften garlic.
6. Roll out pizza dough and place on a piece of parchment on a pizza peel.
7. Use a pastry brush to brush the dough with the garlic olive oil (you don't need to use all of it!). Fish out the garlic pieces and sprinkle them over the dough.  
8. Sprinkle the cheese over the dough
9. Bake for 5 minutes.
10. Using the peel, remove the pizza from the oven, discard parchment paper.  Sprinkle the kale over the pizza and put back in the oven for 5-7 more minutes until the kale is crispy on top.

I didn't take a bunch of pics but here are a few:

The massaged kale

The finished product

Overall it was very tasty, but there are a few things I'd do differently (other than take a better picture of the finished product!)

1. Use more of the gruyere cheese, and reduce the amount of mozzarella.  As Kenji points out, the gruyere is really good with the kale.  
2. Add more garlic, and add some of the red pepper flakes in Kenji's recipe.

So, how did we do on this weeks produce?

• 3/4 pound salad mix  just a little bit left, enough for some salad today
• 3/4 pound spicy salad mix (lots of arugula and other spicy greens) Used most of it for the pizza and pesto, I also tossed it into fritatas this week
• 1/2 pound spinach
• 1 pound kale
• 1 pound collards
• 1 bunch beets
• 1 bunch carrots
• 1 bunch turnips I've used about 1/2, but found out I like them cooked too.
• 1 head lettuce (looks like butter lettuce) 

Left over from last week:

•  2 green onions 

Not so worried about the beets, carrots and turnips, they'll keep, but I need to do a better job on the greens (also the beets and turnips come with their greens attached, so you can add those greens to the collards, kale and salads).  CSA pickup is today, so we'll see what's next! (I'm guessing more salad...)

A Royal Wedding and Salad Pizza

Hi y'all-
And y'all for real.  I got to spend the very early morning (up at 4am) watching the Royal Wedding live, and my favorite part was Bishop Michael Curry, who BROUGHT IT. And you should take a moment to watch his sermon, with tea or without. Nothing from the CSA ended up in our breakfast this morning, but it was delicious.
We had:
Sausage Rolls (made w/ PTB Sausage)
Scones  with homemade orange marmalade, strawberry jam and clotted cream (hard to find in the 'boro)
Tea Sandwiches with radish spread from Deep Run Roots and cucumber. (see post here for recipe, sandwiches on Pepperidge Farm Very Thin White Bread)
English Breakfast Tea (a proper brew).
All super tasty.

Cut to life after the wedding, folks that need to be fed and who are not as interested in the wedding...

Time for some pizza!

I made Mark Bittman's Pizza Dough from "How to Cook Everything" which is my favorite. This recipe is very similar, but I use 14 oz of flour (see measuring with weights rant earlier). 

This is a "salad pizza" meaning that after you pull out of the oven, you douse it salad greens.  It's very tasty and makes you feel better about eating a pizza.

The base for the pizza is an arugula pesto that I make using the Spicy Salad Mix from the Guilford College Farm (it's very spicy, and has a lot of arugula in it).  I use this recipe - changes I make are using 1/4 cup of oil instead of 1/3 cup, and I sub toasted pine nuts for the walnuts.  I whirled some up this afternoon, but I got no pics.  I freeze it in a ice cube tray so I can pull it out all winter.

Pizza:
Rolling out the pizza and covering w/ about 1/4 cup of arugula pesto, prosciutto and mozzarella:

Note: I put the pizza on parchment paper, it makes getting in pizza onto the stone in the oven SO MUCH EASIER!  Then after 5 minutes I take it out so the pizza can crisp up ( you can also make this pizza on the grill, that post will come later this summer!) The pizza cooks for a total of 10 minutes at 500°, so 5 minutes with the parchment, and then 5 minutes without.

When it comes out, cover it up with spicy salad:

Then cut it up and eat!



 

Not much progress on greens today, but I did have a nice salad for dinner:

Mixed greens dressed w/a little olive oil and vinegar, steamed potatoes, grilled flat iron steak and sauteed onions and peppers.  Could have used more salad.

Week two appears:

Aerial view necessary to see all the greens!

What's all in here?  Well, according to the note:

• 3/4 pound salad mix 
• 3/4 pound spicy salad mix (lots of arugula and other spicy greens)
• 1/2 pound spinach
• 1 pound kale
• 1 pound collards
• 1 bunch beets 
• 1 bunch turnips
• 1 head lettuce (looks like butter lettuce)

Looks like saladapalooza week two starts here, but tonight I used a couple of the turnips to make this Rosti Casserole with Baked Eggs from Cooking Light.  It's fast to put together, and to be honest, it's one of the few recipes I use regularly that has turnips in it. I also used one of the green onions left over from last week to substitute for the chives.

I also like it with the spicy salad greens dressed with a little balsamic (another example of using 0.003% of the salad greens in the box for a meal)

Check it out!  I didn't cover up the food with cheese this time!

Stay tuned this week to see if I start eating salad for breakfast.

Yesterday was Mother's Day, and I made one recipe to use up the last vegetable in the box, that bunch of kale.  I'm late to the game of kale salads, but I've had at least one I've liked so I thought it would be worth a try.  Unfortunately, I didn't have the recipe for that one so I relied on the internet.  With a name like "Addictive Raw Kale Salad with Crispy Prosciutto and Parmesan Cheese" what could go wrong?  Well, firstly I wanted it as a side, so I didn't include prosciutto and a cut back on the parm a bit.  I also cut back on the oil by a tablespoon.  It takes a big pile of kale and makes it into a little pile of kale:

The results looked nice and tasted ok, maybe a little too much acid (note toasted pine nut garnish):

But I wouldn't say it's addictive, so maybe the title oversold a little. Or maybe the addictive part is the prosciutto and cheese.

Today I needed to use up the rest of the spinach (about 3-4 ounces?), so I made a quick frittata, a great way to use up stuff in your crisper.  This recipe is loosely adapted from Moosewood Restaurant Cooks at Home.   Serves 1.
Ingredients:
3-4 oz spinach, washed w/ some water still clinging to the leaves
roughly 2/3 cup sauteed peppers and onions left over from dinner Friday
1 clove garlic, minced
1 slice prosciutto, sliced into ribbons
1 whole egg
1 egg white
1 oz (1/4 cup) 6 cheese Italian blend
1/2 tsp olive oil

Heat the olive oil in a 10" nonstick pan over medium high heat.  Turn on broiler and adjust rack to the closest position.  Add the garlic to the pan and allow to sizzle until you can smell it.  Add the spinach and cook 2-3 minutes until it has wilted.  Add in the cooked peppers and onions and the prosciutto and stir things around until they are heated through. Spread the vegetable mixture evenly in the pan.  Beat egg and egg white together and season with salt and pepper.  Reduce heat to low, and pour the egg mixture over the vegetables and tilt the pan to spread it around evenly.  Sprinkle with cheese and cover and cook for 2 minutes.  Remove the cover and put the pan under the broiler until the cheese is browned.  Remove frittata to plate with spatula. Eat lunch.

spinach before wilting

after adding the egg to the pan

after broiling

Let's recap, given the pickup for this week's box is tomorrow:

• 1 bunch swiss chard
• 1 bunch kale still some of the "addictive" salad in the fridge
  
• 1 pound salad mix (mixed lettuces)
• 1 bunch spring onions used 1 to make dressing, the rest will keep.
• 1 bunch radishes
• 1/2 pound spinach
• 1/2 pound mustard greens
• 1 bunch mint used about half for pesto, have been putting it in my water, but still have a bit left over.  It's in a glass with water and starting to root, so I might put it in a pot outside.

Not too shabby.  We'll see what tomorrow's box brings! (Spoiler alert: there will be greens!)

Happy Mother's Day!  Today we'll be having my mother-in-law over for lunch, so we'll finish off the last few salad greens.  I still had the spinach, chard and kale staring at me - so yesterday I was able to transform one for a use to be determined and make dinner with another.  The kale remains...

I did not take any pictures while making this Spinach and Mint Pesto from a cutely named blog called "Pip and Little Blue", and I should have taken the picture of the finished product right after - I think it darkened a bit in the fridge overnight.

Tasting it just now- it still tastes good, but not as good as yesterday.   It's also not as minty as I hoped, I think I'll up the mint next time I make it.  I dropped it into the freezer until I can think of something to do with it.  I was hoping it would go well with lamb - but we'll see.

The recipe was from a UK blog which was nice because most of the measurements were in grams, rather than cups and spoons.  Minor rant here: cup and spoon (volume) measurements are horrible! Not only do you have to wash all the cups and spoons, you have to struggle with getting sticky things like peanut butter and honey out of them.  Why do that when you can just add an ingredient, tare (zero) the scale and then add the next ingredient?  Also, cups can be wildly inaccurate for measuring ingredients like flour. Finally, using weight instead of volume makes scaling recipes up or down so much easier.  So, do yourself a favor and go out right now and buy a digital scale for the kitchen.  I use this one but there are lots of good ones out there.  Rant over.

Back to the box - dinner last night was Swiss Chard and Turkey Sausage over Polenta, which I made with rainbow chard and chicken sausage because I'm a rebel.  It came out very tasty, and checked another CSA item off.

First I had to give the chard a bit of a soak in cold water b/c it had wilted (rainbow chard is so pretty!):

Then get it chopped up:

Once chopped, it got sauteed, and then I added the sausage I'd already cooked (the recipe said to slice it into "coins" but that didn't work well so I just crumbled it. Then put the sausage/chard mixture onto the polenta, and sprinkled with parmesan and pine nuts.

Hmmm...maybe I should start taking pictures before I cover things up with cheese?

Yesterday I was in a workshop all day so hard to use up CSA items.  I was determined to tackle the worlds largest bag of salad last night for dinner.  Grilled chicken salad w/ vegetables it is!  But then of course I discovered that my grill was out of gas....

Ok, I just spent way too much time looking for a "sad trombone" gif.  And I don't even know how to put a gif on this blog.  Back to food.

Fired up the charcoal grill (because that's how I roll) and dinner was saved.

Grilled Chicken Salad
 2 lbs boneless, skinless chicken thighs, sprinkled with Goya Adobo and marinated in Goya Naranja Agria.
2 red bell peppers, sliced
1 vidalia onion, sliced
2 small yukon gold potatoes, cubed
Zesty Avocado Cilantro Buttermilk Dressing from SkinnyTaste
Salad greens, as much of that giant bag of lettuce from the CSA as you can fit in your bowl.

Grill chicken, about 6 min per side.  Let rest for about 5 minutes before you dice it up.

Saute bell peppers and onions (were supposed to be grilled, but ended up sauteed in a little olive oil)

Steam the potatoes until tender

Make the dressing

Plate it up!

Learn to to arrange food more artfully!

And then sometimes a friend comes by and relieves you of some greens:

 And now the giant bag of salad is officially 75% done (Yes, I weighed it. I'm a scientist).  To recap, what was in the box this week:

• 1 bunch swiss chard
• 1 bunch kale
• 1 pound salad mix (mixed lettuces) 75% gone!
• 1 bunch spring onions used 1 to make dressing
• 1 bunch radishes
• 1/2 pound spinach
• 1/2 pound mustard greens
• 1 bunch mint

Obviously there's  some work to do, but it the weekend and I've got ideas...

Today I was feeling unimaginative at breakfast, so no CSA items were consumed.  For lunch I had a repeat of the bread and radish spread.  I had dinner out, but when I got home I was hungry so made this snack:

Take 1 slice of honey ham (deli slices) spread with a little (about 0.25 oz) of cream cheese on one end.  Put some of the mixed salad greens on top of the cream cheese and roll up.  Eat.  This used approximately 0.003% of the enormous bag of mixed salad greens I got the CSA this week.  There is going to be some SERIOUS salad happening here over the next few days...

At the close of the last post, I mentioned I'd eat the other half of my pasta as a frittata this morning.  And I did.  I sauteed 1/2 a bell pepper I had in about 1/2 tsp of olive oil for 2-3 minutes over medium high heat, then  added the leftover pasta mixture:

Then once everything was heated through, I reduced the heat to low, poured in 1 egg white beaten with one whole egg, seasoned with salt and pepper then poured it over the pasta, tilting the pan to spread out the egg.  I sprinkled about 3/4 ounce of Italian blend cheese over, and put on the lid and cooked for 2 min, then removed the lid ran it under the broiler for 2 minutes.
Tahdaa...!

It's not beautiful, but it's breakfast.

Hello World...

I picked up my first CSA box of the summer from the Guilford College Farm, and I thought it would be fun project to blog my way through it this summer.  One of those great ideas that may or may not turn out to be something I can keep up with.  At any rate, here we go with day 1:

I picked up the box this afternoon at the college farm.  I'll have to add some pictures of the farm soon, but for now you just get the box:

Here's what I found inside:

(Hmm....maybe this blog will also give me an opportunity to work on my food photography skills)

According to the list from Nick (he always includes a nice note, a recipe and a list of all the items in the box), this pile of produce is:

• 1 bunch swiss chard
• 1 bunch kale
• 1 pound salad mix (mixed lettuces)
• 1 bunch spring onions
• 1 bunch radishes
• 1/2 pound spinach
• 1/2 pound mustard greens
• 1 bunch mint

That's quite the deal for $20! (Guilford's CSA this spring/summer is 12 weeks for $240).

So, what did I do tonight?  Well, I've been dreaming of radishes thinly sliced on buttered bread with flaky salt sprinkled on top (don't knock it 'til you've tried it!).  I also had been re-reading Vivian Howard's Deep Run Roots and I remembered that she had a recipe for "Fancy Sandwiches" that involved radishes and butter.  I stopped at the HT on the way home and picked up a baguette.  When I got home and actually read the recipe, I realized I was short several ingredients, like mayo and cucumbers, but I was determined to try this!  So I made some mayonnaise (don't be impressed, it's not that hard, and you can tell classes are out since I did it, using this recipe from Food 52)  Mayonnaise in hand, I made this spread (adapted from Deep Run Roots):

Radish Sandwich Spread for Fancy Sandwiches:

• 4 tbs salted butter
• 2 tbs mayonnaise
• 4 tbs cream cheese
• 1/2 cup radishes, grated
• 1/4 cup radish greens, minced
• 1/4 tsp salt (or so)

Mix together this first 3 ingredients until well combined, the add the radishes, greens and salt.  I spread this on toasted baguette slices and topped them with thin slices of radish and sprinkled them with flaky sea salt:

 So ok, yeah, I'm gonna work on the photography, but it tasted good!

Then it was (past) time to make dinner.  All those greens are going to have to go somewhere, and I've found a good quick way to use them up is to make pasta.  I did an adaptation of this pasta dish from Cooking Light.  Instead of chard, I used the mustard greens.  I was by myself tonight - here's how much I made:

Pasta with Mustard Greens and Pancetta for dinner tonight and breakfast tomorrow:

• 4 oz dry pasta (I used penne)
• 1 oz pancetta, chopped
• 1/2 pound mustard greens, large center rib removed, thinly sliced
• 1 cup finely chopped vidalia onion
• 1 clove garlic, minced
• 1 ounce parmesan cheese, grated. 
• red pepper flakes, to taste 

While the pasta water was heating up, I chopped the pancetta and put it in a dutch oven on high (med high?) along with about a half cup of water.  As the water heats up an boils away, it renders out some of the fat and you can then use that fat to brown the pancetta after the water evaporates. Once the pancetta is nicely browned, remove it from the pan with a slotted spoon and set aside.  In the remaining fat, saute the onion for 5 minute until browned slighly.  Add garlic and saute until fragrant. Add mustard greens to pot (they should still have some water clinging to them) and saute 5 minutes until wilted.  Add reserved pancetta to pot.  It looked something like this:

While all this was going on,  my pasta was cooking to al dente (mine was Barilla penne, which takes about 11 minutes).  Add the drained pasta to the greens and pancetta, stir to mix well.  I took half of the pasta/greens mixture and topped it with 1 oz shredded parmesan cheese:

And dinner was served.  Tomorrow I'll mix the other half with some egg and make a frittata for breakfast. But now I need to clean up and go to bed.