Cool as a cucumber

So it's hotter (and humider) than heck outside, so here's a nice cool recipe courtesy of Smitten Kitchen, Takeout-Style Sesame Noodles with Cucumber.  Cold noodles are heaven when it's a furnace outside. I added some cold poached chicken for some extra protein, and the recipe made enough for dinner for two and at least two lunches for me.  I made it pretty much as written, but made a few mods:

1. I did not have Chinese sesame paste so used regular tahini
2. I did not have Chinese rice vinegar so I used regular rice wine vinegar (unseasoned).  I want to find the Chinese rice vinegar as I've read it has a stronger taste - Super G here I come!
3. I added Thai basil to the mint and cilantro suggested for the chopped fresh herbs garnish.  I could have added even more.  
4. As I mentioned above, I added about 3 oz of cold poached chicken, sliced to each serving.  You could also use shredded leftover rotisserie chicken.  I bet some cold boiled/poached shrimp would be good too.

I used the same "rice sticks" Deb describes in her post (like what you might use for pad thai) which I've always struggled with cooking - they're either underdone or overdone and stuck together in a gluey ball.  I think I found a method that works well for me:  Place the rice sticks in a large bowl.  Bring enough water to boil to cover the rice sticks, and pour over.  Let the rice sticks soak 8-10 minutes, testing starting at 7 minutes or so for doneness.  Once they're done, drain the water and rinse w/ cold water to cool.  I even threw a couple of ice cubes in there to help cool down the noodles faster. Perfect and  I didn't even need to add the extra sesame oil to keep them from sticking.

I bet this would be good with soba noodles too!

Cilantro - do you hate it?

How do you feel about cilantro?  The first time I had it I thought I was licking a bar of soap.  The the next time, I was all "this is yummy!".  Don't know what happened there.  I had exactly the opposite reaction with a Japanese herb called shiso. Liked it then hated it. So while I'm happy to see a bundle of cilantro show up in the CSA the last two weeks, I'm hoping Nick doesn't start growing shiso on the farm!

A few things with cilantro I've made before:

• Thai Basil Pesto
• Esquites (just made these last night!)
• Blackeyed Pea Posole with Collards (good, but good Lord it's way too hot for this right now)
• Tomato, Corn and Avocado Salad
• Enchiladas Verdes
• Salsa Verde
• Zesty Avocado Cilantro Dressing

And here are a couple of new things, one with pics and one without, cuz I was hungry.

Guacamole
Note: this is a starting point, adjust ingredients to your taste
1 large ripe avocado (like the ones in the bag at Costco) or 2 small (like the ones in the tiny bag at HT)
1 handful chopped ripe tomato
1 handful chopped onion
1 handful cilantro. chopped
juice from 1/2 lime
1 serrano or 1/2 jalepeño (if it's one of those monster ones!), finely chopped, or a few dashes of hot sauce such as Tapatio
salt and pepper to taste

 Mash avocado in bowl w/ fork or potato masher.  Add the rest of the ingrdients, stir, taste and adjust salt, pepper and hot sauce to your liking.  Serve w/ tortilla chips on tacos or quesadillas, or, just go at it with a spoon.

Some pics!
Avocado ready to be smashed:

Getting to smashing with my tiny potato masher:

Add the rest of the ingredients:

Mix it up:

Needs moar Tapatío:

Week 2 and 3....salad, salad, and the mysterious kohlrabi.

So I got a little behind last week.  No photos of the whole box from week 2, but here's a lovely photo of the mysterious kohlrabi:

What was in the box with this beautiful thing?

Week 2

1 lb salad mix

1/2 lb arugula

1 bunch radish

1 head cabbage

1 lb collards

1 head green leaf lettuce

3 small heads romaine lettue

1 bunch garlic scapes

So, we might have eaten a bit of salad this week!  But not enough, as we've still got the romaine left over and week 3 dropped today:

Week 3

1 head Cherokee lettuce

1 lb salad mix

1 bunch radish (these were much bigger than last week!)

1/4 lb cilantro

1 bunch rainbow chard

2 heads romaine

1 bunch kale

1 broccoli crown

2 cucumbers

One thing we did with week 2 box was to make some of this Zesty Avocado Cilantro Dressing, but instead of adding 1 garlic clove and 2 tbs chopped scallions, I subbed in 3 of the garlic scapes, roughly chopped.  That made it a nice vibrant green:

It also tasted pretty amazing.  This is a throwback to the grilled chicken salad I posted the recipe for here. I've been told however, that this dressing isn't just for salad, it's good on tacos, chips, or just eaten directly from the container with a spoon.

The mysterious kohlrabi, what did I do with that?  A brief internet search informed me that "kohlrabi" is German for "cabbage turnip", and since the head of cabbage wasn't quite enough to make a batch of sauerkraut, I decided to add the kohlrabi to it.

I cut the kohlrabi into matchsticks:

Combined it with the chopped cabbage, salted and massaged it as described in this post and packed it into a mason jar to ferment:

I let it ferment for 6 days, then popped it in the fridge.  Unfortunately, my kitchen was a little too warm, as the brine turned brown on top.  According to the blog www.makesauerkraut.com, that's perfectly normal in warm weather and not harmful, just unappetizing (and if you can't trust a blog named makesauerkraut.com, who can you trust? Anyhow, it smelled and tasted fine, so I think I'm good to go.