CSA Week 5 - June 30th - chinese-style green beans and squash with mornay

Tonight started with needing something quick and easy. I figured Chinese-style green beans fit the bill.

In the end, I did adhere to the quick thing, but couldn't help sneaking a little something extra in there. In addition to the beans I sauteed the eight ball squash (thinly sliced) and added a Mornay. I made the Mornay by melting about 1 tbsp. butter in a small saucepan then adding 1 tbsp. flour to make a roux. I slowly mixed in some milk (1 cup? 1 1/2 cups?), salt, pepper, and nutmeg., then added a bunch of shredded cheese from leftover blocks I had in the fridge (Gruyere, aged Gouda, and Parmesan). It was soupy, but good (I didn't measure anything for the Mornay except flour). Why is cheese sauce so comforting?

The green beans got steamed, then stir-fried with garlic and ginger in a hot pan (the aromatics stuck and burned somewhat in the cast iron, but it wasn't a big deal), then de-glazed and coated with a sauce of soy sauce, cornstarch, water, sesame oil, brown sugar (I always add extra), and crushed red pepper.

Yum. It was really good for me to be forced to make something fast and less involved. It was still satisfying and tasty and used a lot of produce. Oh yeah, obviously these two dishes don't go together at all.

CSA Week 5 - June 29th - daikon cake part 2, kimchi butter, and roasted roots

CSA Week 5 includes scotch kale, arugula, beans, cabbage, red beets, carrots, cucumbers, jalapenos, green onions, daikons, salad turnips, yellow squash, zucchini, and eight ball squash. I didn't take the extra baking squash option.

I am giving the daikons, salad turnips, and green onions to Kelly. 

Last night I cut the daikon cake into pieces according to the recipe and pan fried the pieces in some oil. Chopsticks were hands-down the best choice for turning them (thanks, Jann). They crisped up really well, but I personally may have like smaller pieces for more crispy surface area because I didn't love the internal texture of the cake (gooey, sticky, chewy, presumably from the rice flour).

Inspired by this I made a kimchi butter, too. I minced up a good spoonful of the kkakdugi with about half a stick up unsalted butter. It was tasty! 

I also roasted up all the carrots from this week and the ones leftover from last week plus the remaining beets from last week. 

This time they cooked at 400 F for 40 minutes because I had larger chunks. 

I made a curry sauce to go on them again, this time using leftover Greek yogurt. 

The dipping sauce was soy sauce, sesame oil, sriracha, ginger, and cilantro. I added about 1 tbsp. brown sugar to this. Daikon cake was a fun recipe to try. Jonathan liked the flavor more than me, but with the dipping sauce I found it pretty tasty. I am interested to know what Kelly thinks. 

Last night I had a feeling that these vegetables have so much more potential than we have time and eating capacity for - there are so many wonderful ideas out there (I was perusing this). If I do the CSA again next year I think I would like to limit myself to a half share. 

CSA Week 4 - June 28th - daikon cake part 1

Another trip to CAM International Market for Chinese sausage, dried shrimp, and rice flour provided me with everything I needed to make daikon cake (aka turnip cake, aka radish cake). Kelly suggested I make this dish a few weeks back and I was excited to be trying a brand new dish with techniques I've never used and ingredient combinations I've never tried. I am so thankful that her culinary repertoire includes a lot of vegetables (like daikons) that I don't seek out or use regularly in my cooking. For example, she just told me about sun dried daikons today. 

I followed the recipe pretty closely, though scaled it to 2/3 to account for the amount of roots I was working with (about 1 pound). I used a combination of daikons, salad turnips, and a kohlrabi. My only real ingredient modification was increasing the amount of green onion (I used the six I had in the fridge from the CSA and grocery store). I ended up adding 1/4 tsp. salt to the mix. 

I ran the cut up roots through the food processor as chunks until they were all slightly larger than a mince (I'm sure this size has a name; I'm still working on learning my traditional French cuts). The recipe suggests grating then chopping using different disks, but I don't have this kind of food processor. 

The "good stuff" (sausage, shrimp, and green onion) got cooked before adding the roots and cooking them all together for about 25 minutes, then mixing with rice flour and transferring to a cake pan.

For the steaming I set the cake pan in a vegetable steamer basket in a wide pot. Adding water throughout steaming was a little tricky, but otherwise it worked great. The cake doesn't really firm up during steaming as the recipe suggests, but it does as it cools. Forty-five minutes seemed right.

I am chilling the cake now and will cut it up, pan fry it, and make a sauce for it tomorrow for dinner. Stay tuned! 

I composted the beet greens today. I let them sit in the fridge too long and some were starting to rot. I had enough to do without blanching greens today and, more importantly, I had (have...) more than enough dirty dishes already. 

Leftovers - 1 head cabbage (we're planning on making sauerkraut once we get a head from week 5), a few carrots and beets, and some green bean hummus.

CSA Week 4 - June 27th - basil pesto, drying parsley and jalapenos, freezing squash

Yesterday I dehydrated the remaining parsley and the jalapenos. 

The parsley spent about 6 1/2 hours in the dehydrator (which may have been a little long) and most of the jalapeno spent about 7 1/2 hours in the dehydrator (some pieces more, some pieces less). As you can see I sliced the jalapenos into 1/4" - 1/2" slices. 

I'm not sure this was the best way to do it since I lost a lot of seeds and pieces through the grates. I may try slicing them in half or keeping them whole next time. 

I also grated and froze all the squash (thanks for that suggestion, Mary).

Finally, I made pesto from the basil, roughly scaling down this recipe. The basil had been in the fridge for five days and still looked like this! 

It was pretty good, but may need more salt and more nuts proportionally to the other ingredients. I was planning on freezing it all, but realized that I was hungry so made some pesto farfalle with mushrooms for lunch. Extra Parmesan on top was good. 

 One ice cube worth of pesto made it into the freezer.

CSA Week 4 - June 25th - kale caesar salad and giving things away

It was time for kale Caesar salad again. I always forget how wonderful and satisfying this dish is, as a side or as the whole meal, as it was tonight. 

There's really no use in maintaining a facade in this forum so I'll just say it: the self-imposed pressure of project CSA is bearing down on me. This has been a particularly busy week at home and at work and everywhere in between. Really exciting and different, but really busy. In that spirit I gave away 2 kohlrabi, 1 daikon, and 1 salad turnip to Chris tonight. I hope to find a lot more good homes for vegetables, whether in their raw, prepared, or preserved states, as the summer goes on. 

CSA Week 4 - June 23rd - tzatziki, green bean hummus, and falafel

When I started rattling off the produce that we had on hand tonight Jonathan perked up at "cucumbers" and suggested cucumber yogurt sauce. On a hot and humid day he wanted something cool and refreshing and I had also been dreaming of the cucumbers making their way into a Mediterranean meal somehow.

After some research I settled on the cucumber yogurt sauce (tzatziki) and green bean hummus. I was entertaining the idea of just having these dips with pita, or picking up some falafel mix, but when I took a look at a falafel recipe and saw how easy it was, how many ingredients I already had, and that it used ONE HALF CUP of parsley, I decided to make it from scratch. A good choice.

The tzatziki (recipe below) is a mixture of Greek yogurt, garlic, cucumbers, dill (dried from CSA Week 2), red wine vinegar, oil, and pepper. It is imperative that it sits for at least an hour, ideally more, for the flavors to meld and develop. Imperative.

The hummus is a mixture of green beans, cannelini beans, lemon juice, tahini, roasted garlic, almonds, and oil. I followed the recipe except used about 3 cups green beans (that's what I had) and steamed them until tender, added 2 tbsp. extra virgin olive oil, and added a raw clove of garlic.

We both agreed it could use a little something to perk up the flavor on  its own, though it melded well with everything else. I'd like to try some cumin in it. (Update 6/25: cumin and salt are helpful to the flavor.)

The falafel (!) was a mixture of chickpeas, onion (I used half a medium one), parsley, garlic, egg, cumin, coriander, cayenne, lemon juice, baking powder, olive oil, and bread crumbs. If you follow this recipe go easy on the salt as the amount you need will vary based on your beans (I used about 1/2 tsp). I ground most of the cumin from whole seed, which I think makes a huge difference. I also baked the patties in the oven on a well-oiled baking sheet at 400F for 15 minutes, then flipped and baked for another 10 (instead of frying them).

Avoiding the urge to just eat the tazatziki by the spoonful, we enjoyed CSA-goes-Mediterranean with some pita bread.


Tzatziki
2 cups plain Greek Yogurt
2 cucumbers, peeled, seeded, chopped, tossed with 1/2 tsp. salt and drained in colander while preparing other ingredients
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 tsp. dried dill (1 tbsp. fresh)
1 tbsp. extra virgin olive oil
1/2 tsp. red wine vinegar
1/4 tsp. ground black pepper

Combine all ingredients and refrigerate at least one hour, longer if possible.

p.s. I have been trying to taste more of the produce raw and it's all so incredibly delicious!

CSA Week 4 - June 22nd - roasted roots with curry

CSA Week 4 includes kale, cabbage, carrots, salad turnips, daikons, cucumbers, jalapenos, yellow squash, zucchini, eight ball squash, parsley, gold beets, red beets, basil, kohlrabi, and beans. I got even smarter this week and ditched the carrot tops and kohlrabi leaves in the compost pile at work before the veggies even made it into the car. Dave had the idea to weigh my share before I left. Take a guess and find out at the end of this post.

Jonathan was planning to grill Greenacres NY strip steak tonight so I took it as an excuse to make something simple.

I roasted some beets, almost all the carrots, and a couple turnips (I'd say I cut them all on the scant side of 1/2-inch square) at 400F for almost 35 minutes, stirring them at 20 minutes. The beets and carrots were amazing, but we both could have lived without the turnips. They were okay - just kind of mushy and turnip-y. But the beets! I also tasted a piece of raw red beet today at work today and it was super sweet!

I made a curry sauce by mixing sour cream and milk (I usually use yogurt for this concoction) with some curry powder and salt. A slice of Blue Oven Bad Boy rounded things out. The beets made the curry sauce magenta, which was fun.

CSA Week 4 weighed 16 pounds (without the extra baking squash option).

CSA Week 3 - June 20th and 21st - salmon caesar salad, drying parsley, freezing beets, and more kimchi

Yesterday I dehydrated the parsley in our dehydrator.

Today I boiled and froze the beets,

made more kkakdugi (kimchi) using all the turnips, radishes, and green onions,

and made a salmon Caesar salad with the leftover Batavian lettuce, finely grated Parmesan, and some croutons a la this recipe. This photo looks like crap, but the salad was delicious.

There is about one serving of ginger coconut milk soup from Thursday leftover in the fridge.