The Veggie Project

Kaddo Bourani and Lentil Rice Pilaf

2009-12-01T07:24:00.003-05:00

It’s the end of November and we finally took our Halloween pumpkin off the porch. Since it hadn’t been carved into a jack-o-lantern and seemed in fairly good shape, I wanted to cook it up. One year when I was living in a 3rd floor apartment in Virginia, I forgot about our Halloween pumpkin for several months and when I finally picked it up one day by its stem, the bottom had rotted and its insides all fell out. I was so surprised when that happened that I flung the top part of the pumpkin right off the balcony, without even thinking! What a mess that was to clean up.

To save this year’s pumpkin from a similar fate, I turned to an old favorite, Kaddo Bourani. Below is my vegetarian version of this delicious Afghani pumpkin stew. I don’t know if the lentil rice pilaf is traditional, but I like the combination because it takes care of the protein requirement for the meal. This dish is a big hit with everyone who has tried it, including my kids. If you have a large pumpkin or hubbard squash, the recipe can be doubled and frozen. You’ll just need to make fresh rice and yogurt sauce to serve with the leftovers.

Kaddo Bourani and Lentil Rice Pilaf
Serves 6

Ingredients:
· 3 lb sugar pumpkin, hubbard squash or calabaza squash. It’s best to use one of these squashes, as other winter squashes don’t work quite as well with this recipe.
· 2 T corn or canola oil

Lentil Rice Pilaf:
· 4 cups water
· 1/2 t salt
· 1-1/2 cup brown rice
· 1/2 cup red lentils, rinsed

Sweet Tomato Sauce:
· 14 oz can chopped tomatoes
· 1 clove garlic, crushed
· 1 inch piece of ginger, grated finely
· 1 T ground coriander
· ¼ t black pepper
· ½ T salt
· 1/3 cup sugar

Yogurt Sauce:
· 1 cup plain yogurt
· 1 clove garlic, crushed
· 2 T mint leaves, chopped (fresh is best)

Preheat oven to 425 degrees. Cut pumpkin in half, scoop out seeds, then cut each half into 3-4 crescent wedges. Divide between two baking sheets and add about ½ cup water to each pan. Roast for about 1 hour or until a fork will barely pierce each piece all the way through. Set aside to cool a bit, then peel off skin and cut pumpkin flesh into roughly 1 inch chunks.

In a medium saucepot, heat the water to boiling and then add the lentil rice pilaf ingredients. Simmer, covered, for about 30 minutes or until rice is done. (If you'd like a little more flavor, you can first saute an onion and garlic clove in oil, then add the water and bring to boil.)

Combine the ingredients to make the Sweet Tomato Sauce.

Add oil to a wide-bottomed, deep skillet. Add the pumpkin chunks and sauté about 5 minutes on medium high, until lightly browned on all sides. Stir in Sweet Tomato Sauce. Simmer, covered, about 20 minutes.

Combine ingredients to make Yogurt Sauce.

To serve, pile pumpkin stew on top of the pilaf, then drizzle with the yogurt sauce. Garnish with extra chopped mint, if available.

Potato Pancakes, Apple Compote, and Chocolate Zucchini Cake

2008-10-12T14:32:00.004-04:00

While summer's bounty is at an end, I completely love the flavors of fall. Here are a couple of recipes to keep you cooking local through October:

Potato Pancakes

This recipe is based on the recipe for potato pancakes in The Joy of Cooking. I've made some slight changes.

Ingredients:

5 medium potatoes, peeled, washed, and coarsely grated (about 2.5 cups coarsely grated)
2 large eggs, lightly beaten (may need 3 eggs)
1 tablespoon finely grated onion (I almost always use about 1/2 teaspoon onion powder instead. A cheat, I know.)
2 tablespoons flour
3/4 teaspoon salt
Vegetable oil for frying

Directions:

Peel, wash, and coarsely grate the potatoes. Then place handfuls into a dish towel and wring out excess water. Place the potatoes into a large bowl. Mix with the remaining ingredients (except the vegetable oil).

The resulting mixture should be kind of liquid-y: mostly potatoes, but definitely some liquid that settles to the bottom of the bowl. If the mixture seems dry, add a third egg. This is a very forgiving recipe. Sometimes I only use 2 cups of potatoes, sometimes I use more like 3 cups. Sometimes it's pretty liquidy, sometimes it's more dry. It always turns out yummy, though!

Cover the bottom of a large skillet with approx 1/4 inch of vegetable oil. Heat over medium high heat until hot. (As a tip, you can use a wooden chopstick to test the oil. When the oil is hot enough, bubbles should form around the tip of the wooden chopstick when you dip it in the oil. You can then use the chopstick along with a spatula to help flip the pancakes).

Drop spoonfuls of potato mixture into the hot oil. Use the back of the spoon to spread the mixture out thinly. The thinner your pancakes, the crispier they will become so flatten them according to your preference (very thin if you like crispy pancakes, thicker if you like them less crispy). Stir the potato mixture in the bowl between each spoonful you add to the pan so that the liquid doesn't just settle to the bottom of the bowl.

Fry until browned on the bottom, flip, and fry until the other side is browned. Remove to paper towels to drain.

These are delicious served with sour cream, applesauce, or the apple "compote" I'll include below.

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Apple Compote

This isn't really a compote, but I'm not sure what to call it. Maybe a warm, extremely chunky applesauce?

Ingredients:

5-8 apples
2 tablespoons brown sugar
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
3 tablespoons water (or more)

Directions:

Peel the apples, and then shave chunks off directly into a large saucepan. Add a couple tablespoons of water, and place over medium low heat. Add the cinnamon and sugar and heat until warm and softened, about 15 minutes. This is another forgiving recipe. Cook it longer over a lower heat, though you will probably have to add more water if it starts to dry out. Cook it a really long time, and it'll keep getting more and more like applesauce.

The flavor and consistency of this is dependent on the apples used. I like to use a variety of apples. In the picture above, I used Macs, Jonagolds, and Mutsus, the varieties I picked earlier this week.

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Okay, and dessert is really a summer dessert, that I've been meaning to post for a few months. But keep it in mind for next summer when those zucchinis are once again overflowing the crisper drawers!

Chocolate Zucchini Brownie Cake

I follow the linked recipe exactly and it turns out so amazingly. One of my friends has also make it subbing applesauce for the oil, and said it was still very good. My only complaint about the recipe is that they call it brownies. It's really more like a cake in my opinion. Whatever it is, it's delightful!

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Last note: I made this meal for my Pass the Plate meal. You can see the part of the plate, which I put the potato pancakes on. KitchenAid is selling platters to raise money for breast cancer research. The idea is that you buy a plate, register it online, then cook something for a friend or family member. Then they cook something and pass it along to someone else, who passes it to someone else, etc. Everyone registers the plate online as they pass it, and every time it gets passed, KitchenAid donates $5.

It was really fun to do, and such an easy way to help raise money for breast cancer research!

Savory Goat Cheese and Leek Tart and Fried Green Tomatoes

2008-09-29T10:30:00.002-04:00

It’s been a wet and dreary early fall here in New England, which kind of dictated this unusual but in the end, wonderful meal.
We were supposed to go camping but the weather made that an impossibility. The only upside is that this weather is that it makes me want to cook, specifically something savory and fall-like, and a chance conversation with a friend about the fate of our tomato plants in this terrible weather led me to find a recipe for fried green tomatoes at Southern Living magazine. Paired with this tart I’ve been meaning to make from Local Flavors I had a great meal for a rainy Saturday night.
There are many other recipes online for fried green tomatoes, many of them with fewer ingredients. But this one is from Southern Living, first of all, and the additions are all things like buttermilk and cornmeal, second of all -- so it seemed worth the extra effort, to me. The next day I noticed that I’m not the only Boston-ite who was interested in this southern staple -- the folks at the Boston Globe had the same idea, so you can find a another recipe here. Theirs turns the tomatoes into little mozzarella sandwiches which I just might have to try.
The tart came together with surprising ease. I didn’t make my own crust since we had a frozen rolled one already, but your favorite simple pie crust would do nicely. Since my husband was unable to find crème fraîche at the store I substituted heavy cream. I was worried about the tart setting but there’s such a high leak/other stuff ratio it wasn’t a problem at all -- it’s different than a quiche, the vegetables really do hold the dish together. I had no fresh thyme so put some dried on top instead. While the tart is best served piping hot my husband is planning on taking cool leftovers to work and I think it will be a wonderful and different lunch.
I’ve never made fried green tomatoes before but I’ve enjoyed them at restaurants, most recently at the sorely missed Magnolia’s here in Inman Square. Mine were not nearly as pretty as some of the ones you can get elsewhere but they are easy to make and absolutely delicious. And what a great use for end of season tomatoes that won’t go red before the first frost. We ate them with a little hot sauce but I was thinking that some horseradish mayo would have been amazing as well.

Savory Goat Cheese Tart with Leeks
1 9-inch prebaked tart shell
6 slender leeks
1 tablespoon unsalted butter
6 ounces goat cheese
1 egg
1/2 cup crème fraîche (or heavy cream)
1/2 cup milk
salt and pepper
white pepper
2 teaspoons chopped thyme leaves (or one teaspoon dried)

1. Preheat the oven to 400.
2. Slice the leeks into thin circles and then rinse them thoroughly in water. Meanwhile, elt the butter in a skillet. Add the leeks and cook over medium heat until they are tender, about 10 minutes. Season with salt and pepper.
3. Beat the goat cheese and the egg in a mixer until blended. Add the milk, creme fraiche or cream, a pinch of salt and a pinch of white pepper. Put the leeks into the pie shell and then pour the custard over them, mixing a bit with a spoon or spatula so they are evenly distributed. Put the thyme on top of the part and bake for 30 minutes.

Apple Peach Blueberry Pie

2008-09-17T20:09:00.004-04:00

Quick, it's that magic time of year when you can get fresh, local apples, peaches, and blueberries. And there's nothing better than Apple Peach Blueberry Pie.

I created the recipe for Pi Day this past year, expanding upon my mom's delicious apple pie recipe. And let me tell you, while I loved this pie in March, it's a million times better with ingredients fresh off the tree!

Here's my recipe for Apple Peach Blueberry Pie:

Ingredients:
6 to 8 apples (I like to use a variety of types, larger sized apples. If you use small apples, peel more like 10 to 12)
2 or 3 peaches
2/3 cup of blueberries
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup flour
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
2 tablespoons of butter (optional...I almost always forget it!)
2 pie crusts (make your own or buy from the refrigerator section...I won't tell!)

Directions:

Peel apples and peaches and thinly slice into a large bowl. Add blueberries, sugar, flour, cinnamon, and nutmeg. Stir gently to coat and let sit for at least ten minutes.

Preheat oven to 425 degrees.

Place bottom pie crust into pie plate. Add all of the filling. Cut up the butter and dot around on top of the filling. Top with second pie crust. Cut vents in top.

Place aluminum foil around the edges of the pie to prevent burning. Bake for 30 minutes. Remove aluminum foil and continue baking an additional 10 to 20 minutes until the pie is nicely browned.

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For all you locals, we went to Parlee Farms to pick fruit. They are reasonably priced (we spent $39 for a peck of stone fruit and a 1/2 bushel of apples...over 30 lbs of apples, peaches, nectarine, and plums!) And, it's a lot of fun for kids with a hay ride out to the orchards, a small farm animal area, and a hay maze. They also have a nut-free bakery. It was such a joy to be able to buy a cookie for my son with nut allergies. And if that's not enough, they even had local fall strawberries in their farm stand. Local strawberries! In September! Yum.

Figured I'd pass along the recommendation since we had such a great time!

Raw Fruit/Vegetable Salads

2008-09-06T09:14:00.004-04:00

The latest "raw food craze" has sparked my interest in preparing more fresh fruits & vegetables for my family. Due to concerns with the overall safety of the current food supply and the need for proper nutrition in my food allergic family, I can't go totally raw - yet I can incorporate some of the basic ideas. Growing up on a fruit & vegetable farm in Michigan, it was as much of a delight to pick a fresh juicy green bean and eat it raw as it was to eat a plump strawberry warm from the summer sun.

Purchasing local produce is as close as I'll get to my childhood lifestyle, though affordability and convenience are now also concerns. Moving into the fall season, I thought I'd share a couple of great fruit/vegetable salad combinations, that are perfect to make in the evening and send for lunches/snacks the next day. Feel free to experiment/substitute any kind of vegetable or fruit your CSA sends (i.e. shredded beets/zucchini/jicama for the carrots, pears for the apples, etc.), or add unsweetened shredded coconut or other dried fruit.

Apple/Carrot/Pineapple Salad:
3 crunchy apples, peeled or unpeeled, chopped into chunks (whatever size you prefer)
about 1 can pineapple chunks (fresh or canned in their own juice, drained)
about 4 carrots shredded in a food processor or sliced into thin strips
1/4 c. dried currants or raisins (any dried fruit would work)
1/2 - 1 green pepper, thinly sliced and chopped
optional: chopped walnuts, pecans or any kind of nut

Just mix everything together, it will keep overnight and for at least a day in the fridge. You could choose to put some sort of dressing on it if you wanted (yogurt dressing - yogurt, lemon, and honey), mayo, or a vinaigrette. My kids liked this plain with a little honey drizzled on top (I shred the carrots in my Cuisinart, it makes them much easier to eat for the younger ones, and I used canned pineapple so some of the juice was enough "dressing"). I had to leave off the nuts for the kids (allergic), but they are easy to add last if the adults want some extra protein.

Option for busy people (pictured above): Shred 3 carrots, 1 apple, and 1 green pepper in your Cuisinart food processor. Dump in a can of pineapple juice. I made this for my kids to eat in the car or on-the-run.

Dairy/Egg-Free Fresh Coleslaw:
1/2 head cabbage, shredded (I use my Cuisinart food processor)
1-2 carrots, shredded
1-2 apples, peeled, cut into chunks
1/2 c. raisins, dried currants or cranberries/dried cherries

Dressing:
1 T. rice milk
3 T. white vinegar
2 T. orange juice
1 t. honey
1 T. lemon juice
6 T. olive oil

Just whisk the dressing together and mix in to the vegetables.

Fresh Beet/Carrot Slaw (from Martha Stewart's, "Great Food Fast"...a great cookbook arranged by season):
1 pound raw beets (shredded in food processor)
2 carrots (shredded)

Dressing:
1/4 c. fresh lemon juice
1 T. olive oil
1 T. honey
3/4 t. ground cumin
1/2 t. ground coriander
1/4 t. ground cinnamon
1/8 t. cayenne
salt

Just mix up the dressing and add to the vegetables. I adjust the spices in the dressing for my kids, but otherwise, this is a fun way to eat beets (though perhaps slightly messy).

Robust End-of-the-Summer Spaghetti

2008-08-28T16:05:00.005-04:00

Our summer is winding down now, and we probably had our last visit the Kendall Square Farmers' Market last week. We're heading off on vacation tomorrow, and once back will fall into the crazy routine of school, activities, and work, which will leave less time for trips to farmers' markets and cooking complicated meals. I'll still try to get a post up here and there, and hopefully my fellow bloggers will continue sharing recipes as well.

I chose to make this recipe from Local Flavors by Deborah Madison. I made a few modifications. I left out the anchovies, since we don't eat fish. I also discovered after broiling all the eggplant that just-broiled eggplant tastes really, really good, so not all the eggplant made it to the dish. I also thought the dish needed more protein, so added in a can of white beans.

The dish was fairly easy to make, although it was time consuming. If I did it again, I'd probably broil the vegetables in the morning, since they would have kept well. I was wondering how the vegetables would combine with the olives, and whether the white beans would fit in, but it all came together quite nicely and made for a good meal. I doubled the recipe so that we'd have lots of leftovers, but I never got to eat any leftovers since they disappeared from the fridge, so I guess it was a popular dish.

Something very strange happened when I was broiling the eggplant, though. When I took out the second batch, parts of it were a fluorescent blue color. It was perfectly fresh and cut right before it went in. It looked like the blue-ness had somehow seeped from the pores of the eggplant. I've done some googling to see if this is normal, but haven't found any information, so if anyone knows why some slices of my eggplant turned partially blue, I would love to hear the explanation. I took a picture, since it seemed to need documentation, but I swear it was even bluer in real life. (My son was doing watercolors in the next room at the time, so there's a slight chance there was some paint contamination, but I couldn't figure out how that could have possibly happened.)

I just googled again and found this link about garlic turning blue, and googled again and found that eggplant also contains arthrocyanin, so perhaps I have answered my own question. What did we do before Google when our food turned mysterious colors?

Barley, Kale, and Kidney Bean Stew

2008-08-24T22:29:00.004-04:00

Rachel had recommended this recipe in the comments, and I wanted to give another recipe a try from the book Vegetarian Planet. I hadn't yet cooked with kale this summer, and this looked like a pretty hearty dish. Here is a link to the recipe.

We tend to enjoy lots of stew for leftovers, and were expecting guests for dinner, so I doubled the recipe. The kale and carrots were both from the farmers' market, but I had to substitute in some baby carrots since my kids insisted on eating raw carrots while hopping around the kitchen like bunny rabbits, and that was hard to say no to!

There's a warning in the book not to oversalt, so I was careful to undersalt so that everyone could adjust according to their taste preferences. The stew was good, and the barley was a nice change of pace for a grain. One of our guests suggested adding more kidney beans, since they brought a lot of flavor to the dish, but there didn't seem to be enough of them. It was quite easy to prepare, especially if chopping is done in advance. Even though kale is in season now, it felt like more of a fall/winter dish. I might make it again at some point, but I wasn't excited enough about it for it to be part of our regular meal rotation.

In addition to the stew, we also had some fried squash blossoms with dinner, following WhatACard's recipe here. I'm sort of terrified of deep frying, but they came out really good, though were sort of luke-warm by the time they got to the table. I didn't read that I was supposed to leave the stems on until I had already taken them off, which would have made them a little easier to handle in the scary hot oil. The rest of it was pretty straightforward, though it did take a good amount of prep for such a small part of the meal. My picture isn't nearly as pretty as the one posted earlier, but here's what they looked like.

Magic Pickles and Delicious Baba Ghanoush

2008-08-19T20:42:00.005-04:00

True confessions time: I don't like cucumbers. At all. I mean, I don't even like them to touch my real food. Their icky flavor invades everything it touches. Yuck. But I love pickles. Oh, the hidden depths of me. So, when I saw the post on Boston Dish about making pickles, I figured I'd give it a go. I used the recipe she linked as my starting point, and made just a few changes.

Ingredients:

4 medium sized cucumbers (I only had regular cukes, no pickling cukes)
1 Tablespoon pickling salt
1 cup white sugar
1/4 cup packed brown sugar
1 cup white vinegar
1/2 cup apple cider vinegar
3/4 teaspoon celery seed
1/4 teaspoon tumeric
2 or 3 sprigs of fresh dill
2 cloves garlic
1 serrano pepper

Directions:

Thinly slice cucumbers and place in a large bowl. Add salt, mix, and place in the refrigerator for 90 minutes to 3 hours (no need to be exact...I forgot about mine!).

Place cucumbers in a colander and rinse under cold water, then return to the bowl.

Peel and crush garlic cloves. Cut the serrano pepper in half and remove seeds.

In a medium saucepan, place all remaining ingredients (except the cucumbers). Bring to a boil over medium heat and stir until all the sugar dissolves. Take my advice and do not put your face over the boiling vinegar. And if you do, certainly don't take a big breath. Just my two cents, based on hard-learned experience!

Pour the boiling vinegar mixture over the cucumbers. Cover, refrigerate, and wait around 24 hours. Then voila! Magic occurs, and those cucumbers have become pickles! Keep refrigerated and eat within 2 weeks. Or 5 days, if you're us.

These pickles were surprisingly good. I took them to a picnic, and overheard a couple of elementary school kids talking about how good they were. And how sweet they were. These pickles are pretty sweet, which isn't a big surprise given the huge quantity of sugar in the recipe. The longer the pickles sat in the fridge, the more sour they became. So if you don't like very sweet pickles, you may want to give it a few days before you try them.

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On an unrelated note, one of my favorite eggplant dishes is Baba Ghanoush. However, I've never been able to find a recipe that is anywhere near as good as our favorite, which sadly is from a restaurant in Atlanta. Not exactly some place we can just pop in when the urge takes us. So in my ongoing quest to find a great Baba Ganoush recipe, I tried one from The Figs Table by Todd English and Sally Sampson. I was intrigued by this recipe as it included mint, an ingredient I never thought to try in Baba Ganoush. I made a few minor changes to the recipe:

Ingredients:

4 Chinese Eggplants
Olive oil
2 cloves garlic
2 tablespoons tahini
Juice of one lemon
8 mint leaves
Salt and pepper to taste
minced scallions, lemon zest, and additional olive oil for garnishing
Pita bread

Directions:

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Prick egglants all over with a fork, then rub with olive oil. Place on a cookie sheet, and roast in the oven, turning once, for approximately 30 minutes (until soft...depends on the size of your eggplant). Remove from oven and allow to cool for about 10 mintues.

Peel the garlic cloves and throw into a blender (or large food processor if you're lucky enough to have one. My mini just didn't seem up to the challenge of four eggplants!). Cut then ends off each eggplant, cut a slit down the side of each eggplant, and peel the skin off with your fingers. Add the flesh of the eggplant to the blender. Add the tahini and blend until smooth. You'll have to stop and use a rubber spatula to mix the ingredients around from time to time.

Add the lemon juice, mint leaves, salt, and pepper, and continue blending (and stirring when necessary) until the mint leaves have been completely incorporated.

Chill covered in the refrigerator for at least one hour.

Remove to a plate, drizzle with a small amount of olive oil, and garnish with scallions and lemon zest. Serve with pita bread for dipping.

We enjoyed this recipe, although it still didn't quite live up to our restaurant favorite. The mint was a very interesting addition, and this worked just fine with Chinese Eggplant (the original recipe called for one regular eggplant). While this was good, though, I'll probably keep searching for the elusive "perfect" Baba Ghanoush.

Calabacitas Casserole

2008-08-16T10:22:00.012-04:00

Hello, cooking and blogging friends!

This is my first blog post, after spending most of the summer away. (Away in places like Prince Edward Island and Nova Scotia, where all you can get are delicious, fresh local veggies and fruits ... but that's another post!) One recipe-planning scheduling issue that I'm having in my push to use the farmer's market as our meal-planning driver is that I'm used to planning meals on the weekend and getting all of the week's food shopping done then. Our local farmer's market in Davis Square is on Wednesdays, and it's hard for me to get into the routine of waiting until then to plan. I know I could find a weekend market, but part of the appeal of farmers market shopping for me is walking to it, and seeing neighbors there, etc.

I decided to go with a squash and zucchini recipe because squash and zucchini seem to be still abundant, though I know posters have been supplying "use-up-zucchini" recipes for a while. This recipe, Calabacitas Casserole with Polenta and Cheese, was retrieved by a friend from the Food Network site in 2005, and I'm happy to see it's still here: http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/rachael-ray/calabacitas-casserole-with-polenta-and-cheese-recipe/index.html

Essentially, the key ingredients - corn kernels, garlic, a green chile pepper, zucchini, yellow squash, onion, and tomatoes (recipe recommends a can of stewed tomatoes) - are sauteed.

They are then placed in a baking dish and topped with polenta and cheese. (Photo is taken before baking.)

This is a really comforting dish, and our kids were more open to it than they are to other all-mushed-together foods because the polenta and cheese part, at least (yes, the less-healthy part!), almost tastes like a mini-pizza. They ate some of the veggies, but like many of my casserole-type things, alas, it would be better to keep some zucchini and squash separate so that they can eat those without the influence of the spicy pepper, chili powder and garlic.

Here is a picture of the yummy but messy-looking leftovers, of which there are plenty:

To make the dish even more in season than the recipe linked above, you could cut the kernels off corn on the cob, and you could modify the tomato part to use fresh tomatoes. I haven't tried that yet, mostly because the recipe as written is quite quick - I also have relied on the pre-made tube of polenta rather than making my own. It's a good dish to start in the morning - chopping everything - and then very quick to assemble and cook (8 minutes) at dinner time.

I bet this could be made with many other veggies - I love that the polenta allows you to use less cheese, and yet the dish has an overall cheesy, comforting feeling.

Happy eating!

Corn and Tomato Salad. Plus, Zucchini cookies

2008-08-13T22:01:00.007-04:00

It's hard to believe, but I think I'm finally getting sick of corn on the cob. We've been eating it nearly every day for almost a month, and I'm just starting to look for recipes besides shuck-heat-eat. One of my girlfriends had mentioned she made a corn and tomato salad, but couldn't remember the recipe. So I just winged it. I mean, corn, tomatoes, what else does it need?

I guess I thought of a few more ingredients!

Ingredients:
3 ears corn
20 or so cherry tomatoes
10 leaves of basil
Splash of olive oil
Slightly larger splash of balsamic vinegar
Salt and Pepper to taste

Directions:

Shuck corn, removing all corn silk. Boil the corn for about 2 minutes. Place in a bowl of ice water to stop the cooking and cool them down. When they are cool, cut off the kernels (be careful, the corn may be hotter near the cob). Put the corn kernels into a bowl.

Cut cherry tomatoes in half and add to the bowl with the corn.

Mince the fresh basil, and add to the bowl. Splash in some olive oil and balsamic vinegar, add a few cracks of pepper and salt, give it a stir, and you're done. If you have time, let it sit in the refrigerator for at least an hour to let the flavors develop. Or just eat it right away.

We all enjoyed this, although I wasn't that happy with the visual appeal of the dish. Our corn from the CSA was very light this week, nearly white without any sprinklings of yellow. And we had picked mostly golden cherry tomatoes at the farm (I rooted through the salad to get some of the few red cherry tomatoes in the picture above). The balsamic vinegar almost made the light colors look muddy. I don't know, this is all aesthetics...it tasted just fine. But if I was making it again, I'd look for yellower corn and redder tomatoes. Or I'd try a red wine vinegar instead of balsamic. It needs something to brighten up the colors of the dish to match the bright, fresh flavor. Let me know if you figure it out!

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This week I also made the chocolate chip zucchini cookies mentioned in Barbara Kingsolver's book Animal, Vegetable, Miracle. I followed the recipe exactly, so I won't reprint it here, and I have to say while they were okay, I was a bit disappointed. The cookies were very soft and cakey, no crunch at all, no matter how long I cooked them (well, within reason. The recipe called for 10-15 minutes cooking, I went as long as 20 minutes with one batch. Still very soft).

They were okay, but nothing special. If I was going to make baked goods from zucchini in the future, I'd probably stick with zucchini bread. And if I felt like adding vegetables to my cookies, I'd probably stick with oatmeal carrot chocolate chip cookies.

But I include this here in case you want to give it a go for the novelty of the recipe, or because you're making all the Animal, Vegetable, Miracle recipes, or just to steer you away if you were on the fence. But as I said, they weren't bad. I mean, it used a whole bag of chocolate chips. How bad could they be? And at the very least, my boys are eating them as fast as I'll let them. Hey, it counts as a vegetable, right?

Chard Stuffed with Risotto and Mozzarella

2008-08-11T12:00:00.000-04:00

Although our favorite chard with tofu and tomato dish is still a summer staple, my husband found an article in the New York Times that encouraged me to try something different with chard. The title intrigued me, since I could figure out how to stuff chard, but it turns out that you just roll balls of rice and cheese in chard, so that made more sense to me.

The New York Times only allows subscribers to access its archives after a certain point, but I found a copy of the recipe online here so everyone can access it.

The recipe was time consuming, but seemed pretty worthwhile. I'd probably make it as a special occasion meal, but it was a little involved for a regular dinner. Risotto on its own is time-consuming, and this added several more steps after the risotto. For those who don't want to read the whole recipe, basically you make risotto, wrap mozzarella cheese in balls of the risotto, and then wrap a poached chard leaf around it. You make six of these and put them in a pan, then put about half an inch of vegetable broth in the pan, and bake for 10 minutes. Here's a picture of it when it came out of the oven.

I felt like the end product was a little salty for me, so would probably do half broth and half water for the risotto next time. Otherwise, it was really good and the melted mozzarella and the risotto tasted great together. The saffron added great flavor, and the lemony taste was pretty obvious too (and I did actually zest the lemons, Lee!). The chard didn't really taste like much, but was crucial for holding the whole thing together and presentation. I found that I needed a lot of chard leaves to make this work since some were too small or had holes in them, so I had to be picky.

I think the kids would have liked the risotto and cheese part, but they were sort of put off by the chewy green wrapping. They love mozzarella cheese (or "Cinderella cheese" as my 3-year-old calls it), so had some pieces of that on the side, along with lots of bread. Here's a picture of a kid's plate, which shows a cross-section of the stuffed chard.

I also had some broccoli from the farmers' market, so tried a new broccoli side dish from Local Flavors. It's called Braised Broccoli with Olives. It turned out fine, but I think I prefer the fresher and crisper taste of simple roasted broccoli. Here's the recipe:

4 small heads broccoli or 1.5 or more pounds broccoli sprouts

sea salt and freshly ground pepper

1/4 cup olive oil

1 onion

1 tablespoon chopped majoram or oregano

3 garlic cloves, coarsley chopped

2 tablespoons olive paste or finely chopped Gaeta olives

grated zest of 1/2 lemon

1. Separate the stalks and peel them, then chop into 1/2 inch pieces. Separate the broccoli into florets and peel the base of the crowns.

2. Cook the broccoli in boiling water for 5 minutes. Reserving a cup of water, take out broccoli and chop into smaller than bite-sized pieces.

3. Cook the onion, majoram or oregano, and garlic in a skillet for 5-7 minutes until the onion is soft. Add in the olives or olive paste, then add the broccoli and stir to coat. Season with salt and pepper and add the lemon zest, then add in the reserved water and simmer for 15-20 minutes.

I couldn't find Gaeta olives at Trader Joe's, so I just got a small can of chopped black olives and used the whole thing since I like olives. Make sure you peel the stalks really well, since I missed a few spots and it was pretty obvious. I was all about the lemon zesting when prepping this meal, but lemon juice would probably have had the same effect.

Curried Carrot-Walnut Burgers and Eggplant Gratin

2008-08-10T17:21:00.006-04:00

Among other things, we got carrots and eggplant from the farmers' market last week. I decided to try a recipe for Curried Carrot-Walnut Burgers from the great cookbook, Vegetarian Planet by local author Didi Emmons. I bought this cookbook a couple years ago and have flipped through a few times thinking of the possibilities, but had never attempted a recipe. I also just bought the cookbook Local Flavors by Deborah Madison, since Lee keeps talking about it, and decided to make Eggplant Gratin as a side dish.

Curried Carrot-Walnut burgers
2 tablespoons canola or corn oil
1 medium onion, chopped
1 teaspoon ground coriander seeds
1 teaspoon curry powder
1 teaspoon fennel seeds
1.5 cups sliced white button mushrooms
1.5 cups cooked and drained chick peas
4 medium carrots, grated
1/4 cup chopped walnuts
3 tablespoons chopped cilantro
1/2 teaspoon salt
fresh ground black pepper to taste
unbleached white flour (for dredging and forming the burgers)

1. Heat 1 tablespoon of oil, add the onion and saute for 2 minutes. Add spices and cook for 3 more minutes. Add the mushrooms and cook for 5 more minutes. Remove from heat.

2. Put chickpeas and contents of the pan in a food processor, and run in spurts until everything is well-chopped.

3. Mix in the rest of the ingredients. Flour your hands and form the mixture into patties. Heat oil in a skillet, and cook the patties four minutes on each side until the bottoms are golden brown.

This recipe was somewhat successful. Unlike my husband Josh, who is a chemist, I tend to be pretty approximate with recipes. I think this recipe would have come out better if I had been more precise. I added in an extra carrot because we had a bunch and threw in another handful of walnuts becuase I like them. When it came time to form and cook the patties, the texture did not seem quite right, and I had a really hard time keeping them together. It helped to squeeze handfuls of the batter to drain them a bit, but it was still quite delicate work flipping the burgers. Towards the end, I added in some flour to the batter, and then everything worked much better and it was easier to cook.

Overall, this recipe was a good amount of work. For some reason anything involving the food processor seems complicated to me, and since the ingredients had to be cooked first, then transferred and chopped, and then cooked again, it took quite a while. I also had to wait a while before forming the patties since the mixture was too hot to touch at first. I really liked the final product, though. I had one on a bun, but that seemed like a lot of starch, so then just ate a few more like pancakes with ketchup on top.

I also made the following recipe for Eggplant Gratin. It said it could be served at room temperature or warm, so I made this in advance while the burger batter cooled.

2.5 pounds eggplant, peeled if white
sea salt and freshly ground pepper
1/4 cup olive oil
1 large or 2 medium onions, sliced
4 large eggs
1 cup milk or light cream
1 cup freshly grated Parmesan cheese
1 tablespoon balsamic vinegar
10 large basil leaves, torn into small pieces

1. Preheat oven to 350 and oil a casserole dish. Cut the eggplants into rounds half an inch thick. Salt and set aside.

2. Heat some oil in a skillet and cook the onions for about 12 minutes. While onions cook, combine the eggs, milk, cheese, vinegar, 3/4 teaspoon of salt, and pepper.

3. Rinse salted eggplant and wipe off water with a towel. Heat oil in the skillet and fry each piece of eggplant. Turn right away in the oil and then fry until golden.

4. Mix the eggplant with the onions, basil, and salt and pepper. Put it in the dish and pour the egg and milk mixture over the top. Bake until golden, firm, and puffed for 30-40 minutes. Dish should cool for a bit before serving, or can be served at room temperature.

This dish was good, but time consuming. Frying the eggplant took a while, so I'd make this dish again if I could come up with a shortcut for that step. The rest of the steps were easy, and I like that it could easily be made in advance. My 3-year-old helped by tearing up the basil.

Kathirikkai Vengaya Masala and Bok Choy Poriyal

2008-08-09T22:51:00.007-04:00

Hi all,

Well, I was browsing the web for recipes and I came across a bunch of really yummy sounding Indian style recipes that use ingredients we can currently get at the local farmer's market. This one and the following one can be found on a website called Just for Fun, http://jasu.wordpress.com/. But don't worry, I am also printing the recipe here.

First one is for "spicy fried eggplant in a tomato tamarind sauce" (only a translation of the tastes, not an actual translation of the title unless this was a lucky guess). And by the way, it is not spicy or doesn't have to be - you control the chili powder.

Ingredients
For the gravy
Sliced onion - 2 medium size
Chopped tomato - 2 medium size
Ginger / garlic paste - 1/2 tsp
Turmeric - 1/4 tsp
Chilly powder - 1 tsp
Tamarind paste - 1/4 tsp

For the fry
Indian Eggplant / Kathirikai - 5 to 6 medium size
Chilly powder - 1 tsp
Corriander powder - 1 tsp
Turmeric - 1/4 tsp
Salt
Add all the powders to the eggplant and marinate it for 15mins. Heat little oil and fry the eggplant slices and keep it aside

Method
1. Heat little oil in pan and pop mustard and then add the sliced onion, ginger garlic paste and fry until the onion is half done (soft) . Add the chopped tomato, chilly powder and turmeric and cook till oil separates from the gravy.
2. Add the tamarind juice and cook for 2 to 3 mins. Finally add the fried eggplant slices and mix it gently.
3. Cook on low flame for few more minutes. Enjoy with biryani or any kind of pulao. You can also have this with white rice , curd rice too.

Now with the Bok Choy Poriyal, my husband was helping to prep and decided the recipe on the site didn't quite make sense so he googled another recipe. Before I realized it I was cooking a much more complicated recipe than the original, which was so simple, I thought it would be nice to make it alongside the eggplant. Needless to say this dinner was on the late side, but worth the wait.

Here is the complicated recipe that I used. Don't ask me what a nos is. I was not totally sure about all the measurements but took an educated guess. I did not use fresh coconut, but instead used dyhdrated coconut flakes bought at Whole Foods. They rehydrated to some degree during cooking so they worked for me. I also did not use
curry leaves as I had none so I used Indian style curry powder, just a dash. I don't know what Split black gram is and didn't have time to look it up, so I didn't use that either. And where it says mustard, I used black mustard seed, which is what they meant.

Ingredients
1 no

Onion (diced)
1 bunch Bok choy
2 clove Garlic (crushed)
¼ cup resh grated coconut
¼ tsp

Mustard
¼ tsp

Cumin seeds
¼ tsp

Split black gram
2 nos

Dry red chilli
2 nos

Curry leaves
1 dash

Salt (or to taste)
3 tsp

Oil
1 pinch

Turmeric powder
1 dash

Asafoetida
Instructions

Simple solution to clean the Bok choy is to cut off a small portion of the stalk at the bottom. This would easily separate the stalk and makes cleaning quick and easy. Both stalks and leaves are edible, rinse them under cold water and chop finely. Heat oil in a pan, splutter mustard, dry red chilli, cumin seeds, split black gram and curry leaves. Fry the onions and garlic for a while then add the chopped bok choy with turmeric, asafoetida and salt. This veggie cooks quickly and in about 5 to 7 minutes it becomes tender. (Do not cover to cook) Add the fresh grated coconut, toss a couple of times and serve with rice.

A note of caution: watch the turmeric. No more than what is suggested. It can quickly overtake the other ingredients.

"Just for fun," here is also the original, simpler, recipe that attracted me. But as you can see, the instructions refer to ingredients that are not listed. That is what sent my husband googling.

Ingredients
Bok Choy / Chinese Cabbage - 3 medium size
Shallot Onion - 3 to 4
Cumin seeds - 1/2 tsp
Grated Coconut - 2 tbsps
Garlic pods - 2
Green chilly - 2

Method
1. Wash and chop the leaves.
2. Grind green chilly, cumin, garlic, coconut into a coarse paste.
3. Heat little oil and pop mustard, add the sliced onion fry for a minute. Add chopped leaves and fry for 2 to 3 mins. Add the ground paste , salt and sprinkle little water and cover it with a lid and cook for few more mins.
4. Open the lid and fry until all the water evaporates and the leaves cooked well. Serve with white rice as a side dish.

Anyway, I recommend the basic ideas.

fresh tomatillo salsa

2008-08-06T15:53:00.002-04:00

This is an easy yummy way to use fresh tomatillos. We made this a lot last summer, and as we just got a batch of tomatillas from the farm (and the cilantro, garlic and chilis, too), we made some last night. It is from Rick Bayless', Mexican Everyday, which is a great book.

4 medium tomatillos, husked, rinsed, and quartered
1 large garlic clove
hot green chilis (he recommends 2 serrano or 1 jalepeno), stemmed and roughly chopped
1/2 - 1/3 cup loosely packed, roughly chopped cilantro
salt

Put it all in a blender or processor with a little (1/4 cup) water and 1/2 tsp salt. Get it to the consistency you like (I like it sort of runny). When you put it in a bowl you can add extra water if it needs it. Season to taste. It's best eaten right away.

He includes lots of variations (add parsley, add lemon zest (we do that), try mint, etc...)

I chopped the chilis seeds, pith and all because we like it spicy, but adjust for yourself!

rachel

Corn Fritters with Arugula

2008-08-06T14:28:00.002-04:00

I must warn you, this dish is pretty decadent, for corn. And I say that as a woman who usually prefers her corn on the cob grilled, drizzled with butter, lime juice and cajun pepper and then rolled in parmesan cheese. So if you’re the sort who frets that anything more than a little butter and salt might be too much for your ears, this is not the recipe for you.
But for the rest of us...trust me, these fritters are just as good as they sound.
(It’s another one from Local Flavors, and seriously, I’m not on the payroll. I’m just suffering from a new cookbook crush. I’m sure when my summer fling is over I’ll go back to my old favorite, The Moosewood Restaurant Cooks at Home).
Cutting the corn and getting the milk for this recipe is a messy business, though sort of fun in a weird way. So if you’re cooking for company either do this well in advance or outside unless you are having the kind of guests who won’t mind that your kitchen is covered in corn flecks.
My version ended up a bit more fricassee than fritters which I attribute to not quite enough flour, too small a pan, and the fact that I’m a Lutheran from Long Island and my people do many things well but cook balls of things in oil is not one of them. Those of you from more fritter-friendly cultures will not have the same problems, I suspect.
I have to say almost forwent the arugula since the bunch I had slated for this dish had to pinch hit for spinach in another recipe the previous. But my husband offered to go fetch some more and I’m glad he did, even though ours was no longer local Farmer’s Market yumminess but rather from a neighborhood grocery store that I normally don’t buy anything from that’s not beer, chips or in a factory-sealed can. But the sharp flavor of arugula contrasted against the cheesy corn is what makes this dish. Arrange it around the fritters and make sure each plate has enough to have some in every bite.

6 ears sweet corn
2 eggs beaten
4 scallions, finely sliced
1/2 cup chopped parsley (having no parsley, I substituted some cilantro which worked nicely)
2 tablespoons shredded basil or dill
1 cup grated aged cheddar
1/3 cup flour (I used whole wheat flour)
salt and pepper
butter or oil for frying
a few handfuls of trimmed arugula

1. Slice the kernels off the corn with a sharp knife and then squeeze out the milk with either the back of the knife or a butter knife. Mix the corn kernels with the eggs, scallions, herbs, cheese and as much flour as can be easily absorbed. Season with salt and pepper.
2. Coat a pan generously with oil or butter and heat. Divide the batter into sixths and drop into the skillet. Fry over medium heat until golden brown, about two minutes a side.
3. Put the fritters on plates with the arugula and eat immediately.

Black bean and corn salad? Salsa? And another bonus zucchini recipe

2008-08-06T09:12:00.004-04:00

I love corn on the cob. I mostly just eat it lightly steamed, or occasionally grilled. But, I've been trying to branch out a little and try some new recipes. One thing I decided to throw together was a corn and black bean salsa. Or salad. I'm not sure which I'd call it, but it was yummy.

Ingredients:

1 can (15 oz.) of black beans
4 ears of corn
3 green onions
1 tablespoon fresh minced cilantro (or more to taste)
Ground cumin to taste
1 Tablespoon olive oil
Salt to taste

Directions:

Husk corn and cut the kernels off the cobs. Everyone has a favorite way to do it, but if you're a newbie, here's what I do:
1) When you husk the corn, leave the stems intact (don't break off!)
2) Cut a small amount of the bottom (tip end) of the corn off so you have a flat surface (and it gets rid of the kernels that are generally too small or a little yucky at the tip).
3) Get out a big roasting pan. Holding the corn upright in the pan, use a sharp knife to cut rows of corn off. Keep turning the corn until you've cut off all the kernels. The roasting pan will catch all the kernels as they fall from the cob.

In a medium pot, boil water, then add the corn. Boil for about 2 minutes, then drain and rinse in cold water. (You could also cook the corn on the cob before you cut the kernels off. I just didn't have time to let the corn on the cob cool before cutting it, so I cut it first). Place corn into a large bowl.

Drain and rinse black beans until the water runs clear. Place into the bowl with the corn.

Thinly slice the whites and greens of the green onions and add to the bowl.

Add the olive oil, minced cilantro, ground cumin, and salt. Stir gently and well.

Cover and refrigerate at least 2 hours.

That's it. You can eat it as a salad, but I especially liked it as a salsa with pita chips.

For once, this was something my three year old boys would actually eat. They especially loved picking out their black beans, and loved to spoon it onto pita chips (although it would mostly fall off the chips before it reached their mouths).

___________________

And here's a quickie bonus recipe: Zucchini Grinders. It's a vegetarian sandwich inspired by a meatball sub. Except you use zucchini instead of meatballs. It's a favorite in our house that I make a few times each summer. When I made them last night, I threw in 4 small diced tomatoes while I sauteed the zucchini. I didn't even bother to peel or seed the tomatoes. You could also add in some eggplant or mushrooms or onions or peppers or really, whatever you happen to have around. Or just follow the recipe as written as it is quite yummy.

Summer Vegetable Couscous (sort of)

2008-08-05T06:41:00.003-04:00

I modified this recipe so much I feel like I can barely post it, but figured it's still worth sharing with others. It's from The Classic Zucchini Cookbook.

3 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil

1 onion, slivered

1 green or red bell pepper, diced

2 medium-sized yellow summer squash or golden zucchini, quartered and sliced

2 medium-sized zucchini, quartered and sliced

2 cloves of garlic, minced

2 teaspoons ground cumin

1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1.5-2 cups cooked or canned chickpeas, drained

1.5 cup seeded and diced tomatoes (fresh or canned)

1 cup water

1.5 cups couscous

2 1/4 cups boiling water

salt

1.4 cup chopped fresh cilantro

Directions: Cook the onion and pepper for 3-5 minutes until soft, then add the rest of the vegetables and spices and saute for 5 minutes, then simmer for 30 minutes. Stir in cilantro. Cook couscous separately and serve together.

This was sort of a thrown together meal from things I had around the kitchen. I didn't have couscous, so made it with quinoa instead. I didn't have a pepper or cilantro, so I just left those out. I didn't have summer squash, so I just used lots of zucchini. So I'd basically call this "Zucchini and Chick Peas with spices over quinoa." I also used a ton of chickpeas, since we had a 7-pound can in the pantry older than my youngest child that I was happy to finally open. (As I've explained to Josh, just because you can get something really cheap at Costco, it doesn't mean we actually need it.)

The meal turned out OK. It's something I would make again if I had all the ingredients on hand, but wouldn't necessarily shop for. Since I probably doubled the amount of chickpeas, I should have used more tomatoes and spices to make the meal more flavorful. I think the pepper and cilantro (which I left out) probably would have added some nice flavor as well. There was a note saying you could substitute mild chiles for the pepper, which I meant to do, but then forgot about.

If you try this recipe and actually follow the directions, let me know how it turns out!

Melon and Tomato Salad with Mozzarella and Oregano; Scrambled Eggs with Mushroom and Tomato

2008-08-01T18:00:00.004-04:00

This is from a photocopied recipe that appeared in the kitchen. Katie's friend Crissy had passed in on a while ago, and it got shuffled in with other papers, and reappeared right when we had ingredients to make it. I made fresh mozzarella last weekend so this seemed like a good thing to try.
1 cantaloupe, peeled, seeded, cut into 1" cubes
2 tomatoes, cut into cubes
1 tablespoon fresh oregano, chopped
1/4 cup olive oil
2 tablespoons white wine vinegar
salt and pepper to taste
Fresh mozzarella- the ball I made was probably 3/4 pound- sliced

Mix melon and tomato cubes, drain in colander 5 minutes to remove excess juices.
Mix melon, tomato, oregano, oil and vinegar without mushing up the tomato.
Arrange slices of cheese on a platter, season with salt and pepper, and put melon mixture onto slices. The recipe says to do a spoonful onto each slice, but there was a lot of melon mix, so I just dumped it on a bed of cheese slices. Fresh oregano and melon is something I'd never heard of before but it's a very good mix of flavors. The salad would probably also be good with the little fresh mozzarella balls (ciliegie) just mixed in.

The other recipe I made was a breakfast for dinner dish. During my cheese making last weekend, in addition to the mozzarella and an attempt at monterey jack (aging until October), I also made creme fraiche. I had seen this video a while ago and had been planning to try it out. We tend to get a lot of cherry tomatoes from the garden, although I've never bothered cutting off a whole cluster.

3 eggs
1 cluster of 4 cherry tomatoes
Mushrooms- I used baby bellas, stems removed
1 Tbsp creme fraiche
1/2 Tbsp butter
1 tsp minced chives
olive oil
salt and pepper
whole wheat bread, thick slice toasted.

I actually tripled the recipe to feed the whole family. Heat oil in a frying pan, put the entire cluster in the pan and the mushrooms upside down, add salt and pepper and cook over medium heat. The mushrooms ended up with a little pool of their own juice in the caps.
Crack eggs into saucepan and add butter. Stir over medium heat with a rubber spatula. As eggs start to congeal on bottom of pan, remove from heat and keep stirring until the pan cools too much to cook more, then put back on heat. Once the eggs are semi-solid, add salt and pepper and remove from heat, continuing to stir- eggs will keep cooking until done from residual heat. Mix in creme fraiche until melted through, mix in chives, and serve eggs over toast with cooked tomato and mushroom on the side. Only part of the tomato cluster made it to the plate, the kids demanded to eat the other two.

Black Bean and Summer Squash Stew

2008-07-31T21:25:00.001-04:00

We're catching up to our zucchini production- the plants have slowed down and we keep making recipes like this one. Based on the ingredients and suggested servings (serve with chips, over rice, or in a burrito) I thought it sounded like a zucchini chili. From the Classic Zucchini Cookbook
2 Tbsp olive oil
1 diced onion
1 diced sweet red pepper (forgot to buy one of these)
2 diced green chilis (I used canned)
2 yellow squash or zucchini, sliced and quartered
4 tomatoes
2 15 oz cans black beans, drained and washed
salt and pepper
fresh cilantro (also didn't have this)
Heat oil in a large pan. Cook onion and peppers until onion is translucent (~5 min). Add squash and cook until softened (~5 min more).
Add tomatoes and beans, salt and pepper to taste. Bring to a boil, then cover and cook over med-low heat 15-30 minutes.
Add cilantro. We served it over quinoa:

Roasted Beets with Goat Cheese

2008-07-30T17:16:00.001-04:00

I must admit that beets aren't my favorite, and I'm trying not to let my kids catch on. I mean, they're sweet. They're such a bold, pretty color. Shouldn't kids be attracted to beets? Shouldn't I? But I keep persisting, thanks to our CSA, in trying to make delicious beet recipes. I doubt I'd go out and buy beets, but when they show up in our share, I figure I'm obliged to try to enjoy them.

This time I decided on Roasted Beets with Goat Cheese, borrowing quite heavily from this recipe. Not my favorite food picture ever, but my kids were pretty amused that I'd used the flowered dessert plates to make the beets look like a flower.

Here is the recipe with my changes:

Ingredients:

2 bunches of small-ish beets (about 8-10 beets)
4 small eating onions from the CSA (about 1/3 cup minced) (you could substitute regular onion or shallots)
3 tablespoons minced fresh parsley
2 tablespoons olive oil
2 tablespoons red wine vinegar
2 tablespoons balsamic vinegar
salt and pepper to taste
plenty of crumbled goat cheese (for those eating local in MA, I'm in love with Capri goat cheese from Westfield Farm)

Directions:

Preheat oven to 400 degrees.

Remove any beet greens, leaving a small amount of stem. Wash the beets and place in a baking dish. Toss with some olive oil until lightly coated. Cover the baking dish with aluminum foil (or a lid) and bake about 45 minutes to an hour, until beets are easily pierced by a fork.

While the beets are roasting, mix together all the other ingredients besides the goat cheese. Set aside.

After beets have cooled slightly, cut off the top and bottom and use your fingers to remove the skin. Slice thinly into rounds.

Place the beets onto a serving dish and top with the vinaigrette and crumbled goat cheese.

__________________

These were the most delicious beets I've ever eaten. They got rave reviews from everyone who tried them, which unfortunately did not include our children, who are persisting in their vegetable ban.

Green Beans with Lemon and Pine Nuts

2008-07-29T07:35:00.002-04:00

This side dish is very simple but really flavorful and a nice way to use fresh green beans. I found it on epicurious and used some beans from the Farmer’s Market and fresh parsley from our garden. As is my usual practice I substituted lemon juice for lemon zest because I’m beginning to think lemon zest is part of some sort of conspiracy by the lemon lobby to get me to remove all the skin on my right hand one recipe at a time via microplane grater. Also it never seems to taste like much, to me.

1 1/2 lb green beans, trimmed and cut diagonally into 1/2 inch pieces
1/4 cup toasted pine nuts
2 tablespoons chopped fresh parsley
1 1/2 teaspoons fresh lemon zest (or a tablespoon of lemon juice)
4 teaspoons olive oil
salt and pepper to taste

Cook the beans in a pot of boiling salted water for about five minutes. Drain well. Transfer to a bowl and toss with all the other ingredients. Serve immediately.

Stuffed Squash Blossoms with Cilantro Serrano Cream Sauce

2008-07-28T08:34:00.005-04:00

Yesterday I got the urge to go to a Farmers' Market. I checked a handy-dandy Massachusetts Farmers' Market list, and saw the only Sunday market was in Charles Square in Cambridge. So it was an easy decision where to go! There were only about 5 or 6 vendors there, and I couldn't find any eggplant, which was the original reason for making the trip, but it was still fun and we got plenty of stuff.

One of the neat things we got was a bunch of squash blossoms. Let's be honest: squash blossoms are one of those ingredients that are a big pain in the patootie. They're a lot of work, they have to be used nearly immediately, and they are relatively expensive (we paid $4 for a bunch of about 12 blossoms). But I just can't resist, at least once a year.

I went with a fairly traditional stuffed squash blossom recipe I came up with based on what I had on hand. Then I battered them and deep fried. My husband made cilantro serrano cream sauce, that was a perfect accompaniment. Here are the recipes:

Stuffed Squash Blossoms:

Ingredients:
Approximately 12 squash blossoms
12 oz. ricotta cheese
2 cloves garlic
2 tablespoons finely diced onion (or shallots)
1 teaspoon butter
Freshly cracked black pepper

Directions:

Gently wash the squash blossoms, then reach in and remove the inside stuff (the stamen, I think it's called). It's fine if the blossom rips down one side.

Melt the butter in a small pan over medium heat. Finely dice the garlic and onion, and add to the pan. Saute until slightly softened. You can skip this step if you like the crunch/bite of raw onion and garlic.

In a medium bowl, mix together the ricotta, onions and garlic, and black pepper to taste.

Place the cheese mixture in a pastry bag with no tip. Believe me, I used a tip and learned my lesson. Even though I had very finely minced the garlic and onion, about halfway through stuffing the blossoms, a piece that was slightly too large got stuck in the tip and I had to take the whole thing apart to get the tip out. After that, I used the bag with no tip and it was fine. Anyway, load up the pastry bag and fill each squash blossom until about 1/2" from the top. Don't overfill, especially if you ripped the blossoms along one side, as it will just all leak out. Twist the top slightly to seal the blossom. Repeat until all blossoms are stuffed.

For the batter, I used this recipe as a starting point, but had to make some changes. It made far more batter than I needed, so you might want to have some other veggies on hand as well to batter and fry.

Batter ingredients:
1 1/2 cups flour
3/4 cup cornstarch
1 Tablespoon baking powder
1/2 tablespoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 egg, beaten
1/2 cup ice cubes
1 1/2 cups cold water (or less...add slowly)
additional flour for dredging

Vegetable oil for frying

Directions:
Mix the dry ingredients together, then add the egg, ice cubes, and about 1/2 of the cold water. Stir them together (a single chopstick is the best thing to use...you definitely don't want to over mix). Keep adding water until you've reached a thin pancake batter consistency. Don't make this early...you need to use it pretty soon after you've mixed it.

Place enough vegetable oil in a wok or heavy bottomed pan to fry the squash blossoms. Heat over high heat. I only put enough oil to cover about 1/2 the blossom and then just flip the blossom halfway through cooking.

Roll the squash blossoms in flour to coat, then hold the stem and dip the blossom in the batter until coated. If the batter doesn't cling to the blossoms, it's too thick. Add a little more cold water to thin it.

Place the blossom in the hot oil. Repeat until all blossoms are in the oil. It'll probably be time then to start flipping the first blossoms you added to the oil. The batter should be golden brown when finished, about 2 minutes per side.

Remove to paper towels to drain.

_______________________

You can eat the squash blossoms plain if you'd like. We served ours with a cilantro serrano cream sauce, following the linked recipe. It's a perfect recipe for all you Waltham Fields members as we're getting Serrano peppers now as well as garlic. Our garden is also full of cilantro, so it's really the ideal time for this recipe.

We thought the recipe as written was slightly too mayonaisse-y. If we make it again (and we will), we'll probably replace some mayo with milk or cream. Oh, and we only used one serrano pepper to make it less spicy for our kids, and more importantly, because we only had one serrano pepper. It was just slightly spicy. If your kids will eat spicy foods, I'd probably use at least two peppers. Or make it with one, take some out for your kids, then add an extra pepper or two to the rest of the sauce for the adults.

The cream sauce was delicious over chicken as well. Probably not of interest to all you vegetarians, but I figured I'd mention it for any other omnivores who pop by.

_______________________

I should add why I thought this was a kid-friendly meal. I figured: flowers, neat. Cheese, always a hit. And deep-fried, that's a home run! The flavor of the stuffed blossoms is fairly plain. Good, but not overwhelmingly flavorful for young palates.

Of course, my kids would have needed to taste these to realize they would have liked them. Ah well...maybe people with more adventurous kids will have more luck! The adults in our house loved these, and one of my sons really loved to help prepare them even if he didn't try it. So it wasn't a total loss.

Caprese salad, Grilled herbed squash, grilled corn on the cob

2008-07-25T12:00:00.000-04:00

When your veggies are very fresh, sometimes the less you do with them the better. These three dishes aren't really recipes aside from methods of cooking or presenting the food.
As I mentioned in an earlier post we usually grow a basil plant on our porch to have fresh leaves on hand. It's not enough to do batches of pesto but it's good for adding to sauces or for this traditional Italian salad.
Two large fresh tomatoes
1/2 pound fresh mozzarella
fresh basil leaves
balsamic vinegar
olive oil
Obviously, the higher quality all of these are, the better this will be. I got the tomatoes from the Friday Harvard square farmer's market. The mozzarella wasn't great, it was from costco. We've been making our own cheese and mozzarella is one of the easier ones, but I didn't have time to make a batch for this. (The other cylinder in the picture is our first attempt at cheddar, check back in 6 months to see how it turned out.)

The preparation is just to slice up everything evenly and layer it together, then drizzle some oil and vinegar over it. I always try to get equal numbers of things (although certain people around the house don't mind when there's extra slices of cheese.) Slice up the limiting reagent, in this case the tomatoes, then calculate how many times you'll need to cut the other ingredient. Cut the tomatoes vertically in half, then cut each half into slices. In this case I had 28 slices of tomato so I quartered the cheese then cut it into 7 slices. I actually used a whole pound instead of a half so the slices are think. Put alternating layers of tomato, cheese, and basil on a plate- if you really want to get anal about presentation you can pay attention to things like alternating which direction the half moons of tomato are facing on each layer, or using whole basil leaves if you have a lot.
In our continuing efforts to use up zucchini from the garden, I grilled some of them along with the summer squash from the Kendall market. Cut them fairly think or they'll fall apart on the grill- each squash into three or four slices the length of the fruit. Layer them in a container and sprinkle with oil, vinegar, and herbs (in this case rosemary, basil, and oregano from the porch.) Here's the batch marinating, along with the finished salad:

People have different opinions about grilling corn. I cut off the tops with the husks still on, cut off most of the stem, remove the tougher outer leaves, then soak in water to avoid charring on the grill. This corn was also from Kendall- corn from local farms tends to have ear worms, another good reason to cut off the tops. Soak for about an hour, then wrap each in foil. Everything then went on the grill:

For cooking the squash, flip when the edges appear cooked, then take it off when the juices start to bubble from the middle of the slice- that means it's cooked through. Rotate the corn every five minutes or so. The whole cooking took about 15 or 20 minutes. Unwrap the corn and husk- again, for presentation, you can leave the open husk on as a handle if you want. Here's the final result:

Artichoke and Asparagus Sauté with Toasted Bread Crumbs

2008-07-24T18:21:00.004-04:00

Here’s another recipe from my beloved “Local Flavors” (now recently re-released and available in paperback!) Of course, the author, Deborah Madison is from Santa Fe so artichokes are “local” to her. Not so much for us New Englanders. But most of the rest of the ingredients can be had locally grown -- asparagus, mushrooms, zucchini and scallions.
I liked the looks of this recipe on the page because I’m always a fan of those vegetarian recipes that tend to strike fear in the heart of meat eaters. (No meat! No pasta or rice! Just a pile of green stuff on a plate! *cue running, screaming carnivores*) The very best ones are able to transcend their ingredients to become something more, and this dish does not disappoint.
I made a few changes, of course, because I always do. I used baby artichokes and ended up using about five of them, and I wish I’d used a few more. Instead of regular zucchini I used these chunky globe ones I bought at the Farmer’s Market, but I don’t imagine that made much of a big difference in taste. In the original recipe she says to slice the asparagus thinly on the diagonal and since a. I wasn’t really sure what that meant and b. there are not enough hours in the day for me to spend one of them slicing a pound of asparagus into slivers, so I just cut them into pieces like I normally do for recipes.
Also, she isn’t really clear on how you use supposed to use the bread crumbs, once you make them -- so I tossed some in at the end with the parsley and then added a few more as garnish, with the cheese.
I found it difficult to figure out what the meal would actually be *like* from the recipe so I’ll let you know that it ends up as a hearty summer stew. I served it with a yummy loaf of sourdough bread and it was perfect. No pasta required.

3 large, 4 medium, or some number larger than five baby artichokes, trimmed and quartered
salt and pepper
1lb asparagus, cut into small pieces
1/2lb mushrooms, thinly sliced
1 bunch scallions, including an inch of the greens, chopped
2 medium zucchini, sliced 1/4 inch thick
1/2 cup parsley leaves
2 garlic cloves
1 teaspoon grated lemon zest (I used lemon juice instead)
1/2 cup fres bread crumbs
1/4 cup olive oil
1/4 white wine
1 cup water
freshly grated parmesan cheese

Cook the artichokes in one quart of salted water until tender-firm, about 5 to 7 minutes. Remove and slice thinly. Cut the rest of the vegetables as described.
Chop the parsley and garlic together and add the zest or lemon juice. Brown the bread crumbs in 1 tablespoon of oil and set aside.
Heat the remaining oil in a large skillet (and I do mean large, this dish almost maxed out my biggest chef’s pan) and add the artichokes, asparagus and zucchini. Cook over high heat for a few minutes, then add the scallions and mushrooms, and cook for five minutes more. Add some salt.
Add the wine and let it sizzle and reduce. Then add the water and simmer for a few more minutes until all the vegetables are cooked. Toss them with the parsley and garlic mixture and the bread crumbs and then garnish with the cheese.

Orzo with Zucchini

2008-07-21T12:41:00.002-04:00

I'm almost ashamed to post this recipe as I can't believe it's taken me this long to get around to making my first post here! I have been faithfully reading everyone else's posts and enjoying the recipes. Great stuff—thank you.

As we all know, 'tis the season to eat zucchini. I don't know about you, but I don't find very many recipes that include zucchini that make me go WOW. Just last night, I was watching Iron Chef America and one of the judges commented that he was not sure how the chefs were going to showcase zucchini because it really doesn't have that much flavor. Personally, I agree. I find it watery and bland. But it's good for you and there's always plenty of it—and then some—at this time of year.

A couple of months ago, my book club read Barbara Kingsolver's Animal, Vegatable, Miracle. While I didn't love the book, I did enjoy some of Kingsolver's recipes, including the following for Orzo with Zucchini. I've made a few changes from the original (most notably, I've upped the cheese content significantly). Here's what's great about this recipe:

It uses a TON of zucchini.
It's very forgiving.
It tastes good hot, warm, or at room temperature.
It's really easy.
It can be a main course or a side dish.
It's kid-friendly.
I repeat: IT USES A TON OF ZUCCHINI!

I hope you enjoy it as much as I do.

Orzo with Zucchini

1/2 lb. orzo

3 T. or so olive oil

a lot of zucchini: five or six small ones, two or three large ones, or even more

1 yellow onion, finely diced

1 c. or so grated/shredded cheese of your choice (the original recipe calls for parmesan, but I've used goat cheese, parmesan, asiago, or feta)

salt and pepper to taste

1. Cook orzo according to package directions.

2. Grate the zucchini on the large holes of a box grater. Squeeze out excess water.

3. Heat the oil in a large skillet. Saute grated zucchini and onion over medium heat until well-cooked and beginning to brown.

4. Combine cooked orzo with cooked zucchini and onions. Stir in cheese.

That's it! Told you it was easy. Enjoy.

Zapple bars

2008-07-21T06:00:00.000-04:00

We're getting deep into the zucchini cookbooks now. Due to a miscommunication Katie bought some zucchini and summer squash at the farmer's market on Thursday, when we still had two from the garden in the fridge. Then the next day we got six more from the garden, giving us a total of 10 (followed by six more today.) We had a party to go to yesterday so we looked for some dessert dish to make and found Zapple bars in the Classic Zucchini Cookbook:
Filling:
5.5 cups peeled diced zucchini
1/2 cup lemon juice (recipe says fresh, I used bottled)
2/3 cup packed light brown sugar
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp ground nutmeg

Crust:
2.5 cups flour
1.25 cups sugar
1/2 tsp salt
2 sticks (1/2 pound) butter
1 tsp vanilla (the recipe has this in the ingredients but never says to add it, I assumed it went in with the butter)

Heat oven to 350F.
5.5 cups of zucchini was three large ones. As you can see here, it hardly made a dent in our zucchini stocks:

Cook zucchini and lemon juice in a saucepan (not iron- boiling acid + iron is bad.) Bring to boil and simmer 10 minutes until zucchini is tender. Add sugar and spices, cook 2 minutes more. This came out very watery but I didn't drain it, which led to the "bars" being more like a pie or crisp. It couldn't be cut into bars that could be held, so if you really want bars maybe drain excess liquid at this point.
Mix dry ingredients for crust in a food processor. Add butter and vanilla, mix until crumbly. Press half of this mix to cover the bottom of a greased 9x13 glass dish and bake 10 minutes. Pour filling on top and crumble rest of crust mix on top. This amount of crust didn't quite cover the whole thing and also dissolved some in the watery mix, so you could either make more crust mix or use a smaller pan for thicker bars. Bake 40 minutes. Cool completely before cutting- we had to go to the party so we brought the whole dish along and ate it like an apple crisp:

People at the party couldn't believe it was zucchini, the only way you could tell this wasn't green apple filling was the presence of zucchini seeds. This suggests two principles for future recipes:
1. Lemon juice + sugar + zucchini is a reasonable substitute for cooked apples. Probably less healthy than the real thing.
2. If you add enough sugar and butter to anything, it will taste good. This recipe had a half a pound of butter and about 2 cups of sugar, so don't be fooled into thinking the zucchini makes it good for you.

Beans with Peanuts, Eggplant with Plum, and Zucchini Pancakes

2008-07-20T10:07:00.008-04:00

This week, I had a lot of different vegetables to use. I still had some leftover eggplant from the previous week, and couldn't resist buying green beans again from the farmers' market. They actually weren't all green beans, since they also had yellow wax beans and beautiful purple beans. I was tempted to make the curry recipe from last week again, since it was so good, but decided to try something new. We also had a ton of zucchini to use up from our garden. I couldn't find a recipe that looked interesting and included all these ingredients, so I made decided to make zucchini pancakes with two different vegetable side dishes.

I got both side dish recipes from the Moosewood cookbook Vegetable Dishes I Can't Live Without by Mollie Kantzen. I love this cookbook, but find that there isn't much protein in many of the dishes, perhaps because they are meant as sides. I found a recipe for the beans with a protein component called Green Beans with Crunchy Peanut-Lemon Coating, which I found posted online here.

The recipe was fairly easy to make, although I did have to bring out the blender to chop up the peanuts. I wondered how it would have tasted if peanut butter had been used instead of the chopped peanuts, since I think it would have coated the beans better. It was a great recipe and we all liked it for dinner. It said to serve hot, so I prepared the peanut mixture ahead of time and then cooked the beans right before dinner. The leftovers tasted great right out of the fridge the next day, so I might just make the whole dish in advance next time, especially on a warm summer day. The only disappointing thing was that the beautiful purple beans turned green when I cooked them, which was kind of fun to watch, but my 3-year-old had been excited about eating purple beans. Thankfully he munched on a few raw before I cooked them!

The eggplant dish I chose from the cookbook was even easier to make, and really good. It's called Stir-Fried Eggplant with Ginger-Plum Sauce.

1/3 cup plum jam (don't use the big chunks)
2 teaspoons Dijon mustard (I just used regular mustard)
1/2 teaspoon finely grated fresh ginger
salt and pepper to taste
2 large eggplants (about 3 pounds)
2 tablespoons canola oil or peanut oil
1/4 teaspoon salt
red pepper flakes to taste (optional) -- I left these out

1. Mix the first four ingredients in bowl.
2. Cut the eggplant into small slices. I used a Japanese eggplant so I cut it in half and sliced it, but with a larger eggplant the recipe says you can make 1/2" thick sticks.
3. Heat oil in a pan and add eggplant and salt. Stir continuously to keep from sticking to the bottom of the pan. Cook for 10-15 minutes until the eggplant is tender and half the size it was when started.
4. Mix in the sauce. Can be served warm or at room temperature.

Since this part could be served at room temperature, I made it in advance. It was really easy to make and really good. The only tough part was finding plum jam, which I found at Whole Foods. (After tasting the plum jam, I realized that I probably could have substituted baby food prunes, which we always have on hand, but that certainly didn't sound as delicious as plum jam.) I was thinking this dish would be great with tofu added too, and then it could be a main dish if served over rice or quinoa. This also tasted great right out of the fridge the next day.

The last thing I made was Zucchini Pancakes, using this recipe. The nutritional information was a little frightening, but I decided to skip the step where you rub the pancakes with butter. The recipe was easy and the pancakes turned out great. The kids were very excited to be eating pancakes for dinner, and we served them with a bit of sour cream on top. I thought we'd be having the leftovers for breakfast, but there weren't any leftovers!

Herbed Butter

2008-07-19T01:00:00.000-04:00

This is a simple recipe to use up some of the vast quantities of herbs you have in your garden, or CSA distribution, or just when you have to buy a whole bunch but just need 1 teaspoon for your recipe. Sure, you could dry them, or freeze them, but where's the fun in planning ahead? Eat 'em!

At our last CSA this week, there was you-pick basil. Well, by the time we got home the basil was already looking pretty wilted, probably due to the 95 degree weather. So my husband looked around online to see what he could make with it right away, and this is the recipe he decided to try. You don't really need a recipe...just mix a bunch of chopped basil and garlic into butter. The linked recipe calls for using a food processor. That's too much work. Just slightly soften some butter in the microwave, or in this heat, just leave the butter sitting on your counter for half an hour before making the recipe.

We've made similar recipes with other herbs in the past. My favorite is to mix garlic, rosemary, chives, and parsley together, which happen to be the herbs growing in my garden. You can try it with any herbs you have on hand, though.

Herbed butter is suprisingly versatile. You can melt it over lightly steamed vegetables to add some extra flavor. If you added garlic to your butter, you can use it to make a delicious herbed garlic bread. You can add it to mashed potatoes for some extra zip. You can put it over corn on the cob. But let's be honest: mostly, ours gets snacked on, spread on crackers or bread, until there's not enough left to do anything else with it.

And if you're feeling especially pioneer-ish, you can even make your own butter. It's suprisingly easy, and fun for kids (and adults, too. In fact, adults are usually more intrigued than the kids in my experience). I posted directions over on my blog a few months ago, so head on over there if you feel like shaking, shaking, shaking.

Pasta With Leeks, Peas and Pecorino

2008-07-18T06:15:00.002-04:00

This recipe came to me via my friend Leen, a fellow vegetarian Mom from Seattle who responded to my request for something yummy to do with fresh peas. It's originally from Real Simple.
It’s a pretty straight-forward and simple recipe, perfect for a busy weekday night. The hardest part is shelling the peas, which I gather some people actively dislike doing but I don't really mind. I substituted light cream for the heavy cream because using heavy cream in cooking anything other than desserts kinds of squicks me out (note to self: maybe this is why no one seems to like my Alfredo sauce?) and I underestimated the amount of peas I would need grabbing them by the handfuls at the Farmer’s Market. It’s a nice find too, if, like me, you always see certain things at the Farmer’s Market but don’t know what you would do with them. I feel that way about leeks and peas, (and, now that I think about it, mint).
My husband especially loved this dish. He felt since we both cook so many vegetarian pasta dishes that it’s great to have something for dinner with a whole other set of flavors than the normal tomato-eggplant-mushroom triumvirate.

1 pound dry pasta
1/4 cup fresh mint leaves torn
2 tablespoons olive oil
4 leeks, white and like green parts only, thinly sliced
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon black pepper
2 cloves garlic (on the suggestion of my friend, I doubled the garlic to four cloves -- do it unless you loathe garlic)
2 lbs fresh peas (two cups shelled)
3/4 cup heavy cream (I used light cream)
1 cup grated pecorino
2 teaspoons lemon zest (being fresh out of zest, I used a tablespoon of lemon juice added at the end instead)

Cook the pasta as normal.
Heat the oil, and add the leeks with the salt and pepper. Cook until soft, about five to seven minutes. Add the garlic and peas and cook for two more minutes. Add the cream and 3/4 cup of the cheese. Simmer until the sauce thickens, about four minutes.
Drain the pasta and toss with the sauce, mint and lemon zest (or in my case, juice). Top with the rest of the cheese.

We interrupt this blog to bring you very local produce

2008-07-17T00:42:00.014-04:00

Most of the vegetables we're using in this project are from farmer's markets or local farms. So far we've hit Drumlin farm, Land's Sake farm, the Kendall square farmer's market, Pound Ridge NY (lame!) and last year we also did some of Central and Harvard Squares and BUSA farm.
But the most local produce is from plants you grow yourselves. I've mentioned the herb plants we have on our porch (basil, chives, oregano, parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme) and we also have alpine strawberries, 4 tomato plants, and a sweet red pepper. I put in fresh soil this year (the previous was 3 years old) and the results are pretty good- no tomatoes or peppers yet, but the grape tomatoes are starting to ripen.
What if you don't have a sunny porch, roof deck, or yard in the city? We also have a plot in a community garden that we got several years ago. It's an 8x12 piece of dirt with a water source, and we pay $5/year for common expenses. Cambridge has many of these (14 according to this) but it's not always clear how to get one. You need to contact the Cambridge Conservation Commission and they'll put you in touch with the coordinator for the garden you're interested in. When we got an apartment in mid Cambridge, we signed up for several and ended up with a plot pretty quickly, and then back about others over the subsequent years, so it seems like the waiting time can be anywhere from one to several years.
Other cities also have similar programs. Boston has several with available plots, including one near the Publick Theater in Allston and an enormous one in the Fens. Somerville also has 8 small ones.
So what can you fit in an 8x12 plot? More than you might think. Here's a view of the whole thing with different crops labeled.

The key in a small space is to grow vertically. Cucumbers, pole beans, peas, and tomatoes can all be trained up a stake or cage.
Here are some of the tomatoes we're growing, which includes some standard (super 100 cherry) and some heirloom (Brandywine pink, Mr. Stripey red & yellow striped) and one I forgot to label- it will be a surprise!

They seem to be doing better than ever this year. Last fall I added peat moss, manure, and lime (to balance the pH of the peat) and I also grew winter rye which was turned into mulch in the spring. I've also been aggressively pruning and staking them which seems to work very well.
Other climbers are cucumbers, peas, and beans. Both of these were grown timed with other crops, the cucumber was planted as the peas were maturing and is now climbing their trellis, and the pole beans were planted over the edamame and are climbing as the soybeans are fruiting. (This was an accident, I thought the soybeans weren't growing so I planted some pole bean seeds I had then ended up with both.)

We usually do some kind of squash, either yellow (summer) or green (zucchini) because they're very prolific. They do take up a lot of space but the yield per square foot is very high- if you can avoid powdery mildew and slugs. The geraniums help repel slugs, and I also use iron phosphate (sold as Slug Magic or Sluggo) to control slugs and snails.

We're also trying some experimental crops this year. The 3 year old grew carrots at his school this year so he wanted to try some- they seem to be doing well, I wasn't sure if the soil was deep enough so we'll see what the roots look like when they're ready. Finally, we had a small crop of spinach in the spring then replaced it with cantaloupe. I've never done any melons or large things like pumpkins, so I don't know what will happen. I just read that you can train them to climb, but then need to put the melons in a net (like a piece of pantyhose) to support them. They need a ton of water and they also tend to attract rats and mice. That is not a good thing in a city garden, but they supposedly can be controlled with chicken wire (the larger rats, anyway.)

Finally, here's the first crop of the summer plants- 1 cucumber (they're the pickle sized variety, easier to eat the whole thing) and 3 zucchini (one of which ended up in the zucchini cake below.)

How does the cost of a garden compare to farmer's markets? It's hard to say- labor aside, I spend a lot on the garden. I haven't had much luck growing most things from seed- peas and carrots and beans are fine, but tomatoes and cucumbers and zucchini don't seem to work for me. So I buy those as seedlings, which is about $3 per tomato plant or per zucchini 6-pack (the above bush is all six grown together in a mound.) So plantings this year were about $25. We have bamboo stakes that have been used for many years, I just got some expensive permanent steel/plastic ones that will last a long time- say $10 per year on stakes, string, and cages. Then there's fertilizer, manure, peat moss, etc., which may be another $20 for the year. With the $5 garden fee, that's $60 total so far. So far we have 4 pickle cukes, 4 zucchini, only about 25 peas and a half pound of spinach (the early warm weather ruined the cold-loving crops, usually we have over 100 sugar snap peas.) At the end of the season we'll see how much we got for the $60 plus hours of planting, watering, and weeding.

Mixed Squash on the Barbie

2008-07-16T14:08:00.004-04:00

Is there anything better than fresh summer squash? I love it, and have loved getting a few new varieties to try from our CSA this year. I've been experimenting with quick, simple ways to prepare delicious squash side dishes, and I've found one that has become a favorite in our house. The best part is it can be cooked outside on these hot days!

As with many recipes, quantities here are footloose and fancy-free...adjust them to your own tastes or what you happen to have on hand. That said, here's how I made it:

Ingredients:
Approx. 2 lbs of squash, I used patty pan and crookneck since that's what we'd gotten at our CSA
1 red onion
2 to 3 tablespoons olive oil
2 to 3 tablespoons balsamic vinegar
1 tablespoon lemon juice
1 teaspoon fresh lemon thyme (I'd probably use more in the future, but that's all we had)
Zest from 1/2 a lemon

Directions:
Dice squash into bite-sized pieces large enough not to fall through the holes of a grill basket. There's no need to peel them; just wash the skin well. Dice onion into similar sized pieces. In a large bowl, stir together all the ingredients. If it seems too dry, add some additional olive oil and vinegar.

Transfer squash to a grill basket. Grill over medium heat, stirring occasionally, until squash are fork-tender (but not mushy).

Alternately, you could cut large slices of big squash and grill directly on the grate. Or you could wrap all the veggies inside a double layer of grill foil and steam them directly on the grill. Or you could cook it in a pan on the stove. Or if you wanted to pay a lot of attention to it, you could even stick it under the broiler. You have a lot of options, but if you have a grill basket, that's probably the easiest.

Enjoy, and just keep repeating that you can never have too much squash!

Vegetable Curry Dish and Zucchini Cake

2008-07-14T05:00:00.000-04:00

Part 1: Eggplant, Green Beans, Pumpkin, and Basil in Coconut-Tomato Curry

At the farmers' market last week, we got some eggplant, beans, and greens. The sign had blown off the eggplant, so I wasn't sure what kind it was, but from looking at this site have decided it was Japanese eggplant, which conveniently was what the recipe I used had called for. It was long and skinny, but had a dark skin like in the picture.

I always have trouble finding good recipes for eggplant, so I turned to a new cookbook I have from Moosewood: The Vegetable Dishes I Can't Live Without by Mollie Katzen. There were many interesting recipes for eggplant, but most looked like side dishes. I decided to make a dish called Eggplant, Green Beans, Pumpkin, and Basil in Coconut-Tomato Curry. I found a copy of the recipe online here.

I can't say I followed this recipe too carefully. Since I was also planning on baking a cake from scratch, I decided to take some major shortcuts. They didn't have curry paste at Trader Joe's, and the thought of hauling the kids on another shopping trip was not appealing, so I got two bottles of Red Curry Sauce from Trader Joe's. I also thought the dish was lacking in protein, which seems oddly common in vegetarian recipes, so I added tofu to the recipe. Rather than seek out a kabocha squash (Japanese pumpkin), I used frozen butternut squash cubes that I already had at home.

Since the recipe only called for one eggplant, and I had a few, I decided to double the recipe. I started by stir frying three pounds of tofu, and then let it simmer in the curry sauce for a while. Since I used store bought curry sauce, I just added in the vegetables from the recipe. I put in two cut-up eggplants, four cups of chopped beans, and four cups of squash from the freezer that I steamed first. After 10 minutes, the vegetables still didn't look fully cooked, so I let it go for another 10 minutes. Since it said the recipe reheats well, I did all this prep early in the afternoon, and then reheated at dinnertime and added in the basil. I also cooked up a pot of brown basmati rice from Trader Joe's. The dish looked like this:

For the kids, I left out some ingredients while cooking and gave them their own plates with separate foods, in addition to a bowl of the vegetables with curry.

The results were quite good. I thought I might have overcooked the vegetables, since they looked pretty wrinkly, but everything tasted great and you could really taste the freshness of the beans. I'm not a big fan of spicy food, so I thought the curry might be too intense, but it was a good amount of spice. Josh thought the curry distracted a bit from the flavor of the vegetables, though. The kids ate a lot of food from their plates, and the toddler surprised me by eating tofu and vegetables from his bowl of the curry dish. The tomatoes and squash pretty much disappeared into the sauce, but probably added to the flavor even if I didn't necessarily notice it. It was a fairly easy recipe to make, and if vegetables are chopped ahead of time could be done rather quickly.

I thought the dish would go well with Indian bread, like the frozen naan we often get at Trader Joe's, but Josh had already started making no-knead bread the night before, so we had that instead.

I would definitely make this dish again, and would like to try making the curry sauce from scratch and using an actual kabocha squash, since it sounds really good. If anyone knows where to find one locally in Cambridge, I'd love to hear about it. I think the tofu was a great addition and would include that again. The meal reheated great and we ate it again for dinner the next night.

Part 2: Zucchini Cake

It was my husband's birthday, and I decided to keep with the theme of cooking local for dessert as well. We have zucchini growing in our community garden plot, so I decided to make him a zucchini cake. I found a recipes in The Classic Zucchini Cookbook for chocolate zucchini cake which sounded great, but my husband is unfortunately not a big chocolate fan, so I decided to make this one instead. It's supposed to be a three-tiered cake, but that sounded huge and too complicated, so I did two-thirds of the recipe and made a two-tiered cake instead, which was still way too big for our family of four.

As you can see, my cake decorating skills leave much to be desired, and I certainly can't compete with the beautiful work done at Mark Joseph Cakes. (Pardon the shameless plug for relatives who recently started their own business.)

The cake was fairly simple to make, and my 3-year-old was thrilled to be involved in the process, though not surprisingly did not manage to keep the cake a secret when his dad got home from work. He ran right over to me and whispered, loudly, "Can I tell him about the cake? Can I tell Daddy the secret?". It took much longer to bake than the recipe called for. I baked it for 35 minutes and still looked underdone in the middle. Otherwise, the cake turned out fine. It was moist and sort of dense, and the cream cheese frosting was really good. I don't think I'd make it again, unless I had a cake to make and extra zucchini around. My real issue with cake that includes vegetables is that I think of it as healthy, which means it seems like appropriate breakfast food or snack food the next day. However, I doubt with a cup of oil and four total cups of sugar, that this was much healthier than a traditional cake.

Tomato Pie

2008-07-13T06:00:00.000-04:00

I was visiting family for the 4th of July last weekend, but determined to meet my goal of trying one new recipe a week. On the way home, we stopped at the farmers' market in Pound Ridge, NY, hoping to stock up on vegetables for the week. Unlike the farmers' markets around here, the one in Pound Ridge was lacking in vegetables. It was just a few stands with jams, plants, and other random stuff. It made me realize that the area where I grew up just doesn't have many farms around, and I'm grateful to live in an area where my kids can really get a sense that food comes from the ground, rather than the supermarket.

The only vegetables for sale were tomatoes, so I bought a few pounds of tomatoes to bring home to Cambridge with us. I looked up recipes to try when we arrived home, and decided on this one. It looked fairly easy to make, and the kids were very excited by the idea of having pie for dinner.

It definitely could be make with a store bought pie crust, but Josh is a big pie maker, and made me a crust easily. One nice thing about this recipe is that it was very easy for my 3-year-old to help. He laid all the tomatoes out in the pie, and scooped the cheese/mayo mixture on top. They didn't have green onions at Trader Joe's so we used chives from our front porch instead.

It took a little while longer to cook than I thought it would, but the pie crust started to brown so we decided it was ready. The 3-year-old, who had been very excited to eat pie for dinner, got very upset when he saw it since he thought pies must have crusts on top, so he refused to even try it. It was a little soupy when we served it, and didn't quite hold it's shape. My toddler likes to try eating everything with a fork, and he had trouble eating this on his own, but seemed to like what he managed to get to his mouth.

I thought it tasted OK, but wasn't too crazy about the tomato/cheddar combination. I've since seen similar recipes that use different cheeses, and I think it would be better with goat cheese or mozzarella (especially fresh mozzarella). We joked that with mozzarella it would be a pizza pie. I think we if end up with lots of tasty tomatoes, I'll give this concept another try, but with some changes in the ingredients. I think basil would have been a nice substitution for the green onions.

The pie held up well for leftovers, and we all got a second meal out of it at lunch the next day.

Tofu with swiss chard; Beets & greens

2008-07-12T22:04:00.020-04:00

This is a recipe we've been making for a few years. The wife informs me that she made it up herself by adapting a recipe from the first CSA we joined several years ago. It's a good mix of flavors and very nutritious- along with the beet greens I made, apparently this meal includes two of the top three foods we should eat more of, although it seems I'm a bad person for cooking my beets. The other thing about beets is that they can result in interesting visual effects one to two days later, but since this is a family blog I won't post pictures of that.
First, preparing the beets for cooking- I like cooking beats with their greens because the leaves usually have a salty/bitter flavor that goes well with the sweet root. I cut the pointy part of the root off, then cut at the base of the stem and got rid of the tough stems while keeping the leaves:

Next, I thinly sliced the roots to make them easier to cook through. Cooking them until they are just slightly browned gives them a good crisp outside-soft inside, but again is probably evil health-wise:

Now for the main dish:
1 lb firm tofu
1 large onion
1 bunch swiss chard
1 large tomato
fresh herbs (basil, oregano)
olive oil
1 clove garlic
1 lb pasta (I did spaghetti)
Here's everything laid out for slicing- this is a double recipe, and my onions were small (2 red, one white) so I used 3. The tomatoes and chard were from the Kendall farmer's market and the herbs from the porch (see the previously-photographed plant, which is getting larger each week.) The chard leaves got the same treatment as the beet greens, removing the stems. In fact, I had some deja vu cutting up the chard since it was of the red variety; It's easy to tell the difference by taste, since chard is more cabbage-like as opposed to the aforementioned salty/bitter beet greens.

First, dice the garlic and saute in the olive oil. Then add the onion and cook until somewhat tender, but not too much since there's more cooking ahead. Next add the tofu, toss, and cook about 5 minutes so it firms up, especially if you're not using extra firm. Next come the greens- whenever we cook greens we always overestimate the amount we'll be able to fit into the pot. They always cook down, as you can see from the before and after shots below of both the main dish and the beet greens.

The key is to carefully invert everything so your already cooked stuff ends up on the top and the greens are under it exposed to heat. Cover and cook a few minutes until the greens are darker and more tender. Last add the tomato and chopped herbs, toss and cook about 2-3 more minutes. The tomato's juice along with the water from the greens will make something like a watery sauce. Serve over the pasta. For the kids we kept everything segregated, with uncooked tofu, which they prefer over tofu that "has stuff on it- wash it off!" Also, again with the non-local corn- some people don't like the starch overload of pasta and corn at the same meal, but having both increases the odds that the kids will eat something. Don't let the dog get the corn cob, though.

Pasta with baked tofu and pesto

2008-07-12T17:30:00.000-04:00

I'm behind on my homework. This was made on June 22.
This is the basil plant on our porch.
We grow various herbs on our porch which means they're available fresh for cooking, but we can't grow too many plants because of space. The problem with growing one basil plant is that most recipes I've seen use just a couple leaves, while pesto requires the whole plant. (The exception is caprese salad.)

At farmer's markets, they tend to sell entire basil plants. We picked one up at Drumlin farm, so of course I went with pesto. I used the recipe from the NYT cookbook:
2 cups basil leaves
2 large garlic cloves
3 tablespoons pine nuts, lightly toasted
1/3 cup grated parmesian cheese
1/3 cup olive oil
pinch of salt
Mix all in a food processor.

To add more protein, we searched for a recipe mixing pesto with tofu in some form and found this one which involved baking the tofu with oil and vinegar.
The tofu came out tasting like not much, but mixed with the pesto was not bad.
We also had some ears of corn lying around (I think it was from Whole Foods where they had been on sale- not local though, from Georgia.) The final result looked like standard pesto and pasta with some tofu blocks on it:

We also had many pounds of fresh strawberries because we had gone to the Land's Sake Strawberry Festival the day before. I made strawberry shortcake, although I made the cake as one big sheet instead of biscuits as in this recipe. Unfortunately, by the time we remembered to take a picture, it looked like this:

Scalloped Kale and Potatoes

2008-07-12T15:23:00.003-04:00

This recipe is from Quick Vegetarian Pleasures. I used a mix of two varieties of fresh kale purchased from Busa Farms.

Ingredients:
1 lbs (or more) fresh kale
5 medium-large potatoes, thinly sliced
2 minced garlic cloves
1.5 cups grated cheese (the recipe calls for swiss, i used cheddar)
6 tbsps cold unsalted butter, cut into bits
salt and pepper to taste
1.25 cups milk

Wash the kale, remove from stalks, and cook in 1/2 cup of water for 7 minutes, until it is just wilted. Drain and cool, squeeze out water, and roughly chop. Pre-heat oven to 425 degrees, and butter a large shallow baking dish. Layer 1/2 the potato slices, then all the kale, the garlic, 1/2 the cheese, butter, salt & pepper. Top with other 1/2 of potato, cheese, butter, and salt & pepper. Pour in the milk and bake 50 minutes uncovered.

Very simple, and really tasty. Next time, I might try adding some chopped tomatoes, or some nuts (pine nuts or almonds). If you do try either of those or another variation you like, let me know. :-)

Stacie

Strawberry Coffee Cake

2008-07-08T13:43:00.004-04:00

We went strawberry picking last weekend at Connors Farm so I wanted to find a recipe that would use a lot of them, since we returned with several pints. Initially I was looking for strawberry breads, but came across a few versions of this strawberry coffee cake recipe on some other blogs and recipe sites and was immediately hooked. It has almost everything I like in a recipe -- it’s easy, yummy, and something my daughter can help me make. Of course, it’s loaded with fat and sugar and it’s pretty much impossible to have just one slice, but that’s just is proof that you can’t have everything.

The crumble topping:
1 cup flour
1/2 cup sugar
1 stick cold butter

Mix the flour and sugar together and put the stick of butter in the bowl. Mush the butter with your fingers into the flour and sugar until it’s separated into pea-sized bits. If your three-year-old is anything like mine this is the sort of task that he or she will desperately want to help with but not be remotely good at, so do it when they aren’t looking.
Refrigerate until needed.

The cake:
2 cups flour
1 cup sugar
2 Tbsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
2 tsp cinnamon
2 tsp vanilla
1 cup milk
2 eggs
1/4 cup melted butter
3 cups of strawberries, trimmed of leaves and cut in half

Mix together all the dry ingredients and set aside. Whisk the wet ingredients together, then add to the dry, mixing with a spoon or hand mixer.
Pour the batter into a greased 13 by 9 pan. Lay the strawberry halves on top of the batter and cover them with the crumble topping. (This is a better job job for preschoolers who want to help)
Bake at 350 for 35 to 45 minutes. Just smelling it cook you’ll know you have something good on your hands.
When it’s finished you’ll find that the cut fruit will have melted into pools of liquid strawberry yumminess and that the cinnamon flavor is really highlighted -- my one regret is that I didn’t have really good cinnamon on hand, just some random supermarket stuff. That’s a mistake I’ll rectify the next time I make this because I think some high quality cinnamon is the one improvement my version of this cake needed.
We ate this coffee cake as a summer evening dessert since I didn’t get my act together to make it in the morning but it would also be excellent (maybe even better) for brunch. Eat it warm or cooled, your preference. I served it with whipped cream but that’s not even necessary.
The recipe is pretty simple and foolproof, and parts of it (like the topping) can be made in advance. I also think this cake would work well with other kinds of fruit -- I can’t wait to try it with raspberries later in the summer, and my husband thought peaches would be great in the cake as well. This recipe is a wonderful find if your family likes picking fresh fruit in the summer as much as mine does.

polenta with beet greens and bleu cheese

2008-07-07T13:16:00.001-04:00

hi everyone,

i have enjoyed the posts so far and was inspired to post today since i
had a great lunch using greens from our farm share today.

i purchased a "roll" of polenta from whole foods and cut 3 slices for
myself (about 1/2 inch thick) and sauteed them in a little olive oil in
a nonstick pan for about 3-4 minutes on each side. until they are warmed
through (polenta in this kind of packing is already cooked). this
polenta is located in the dairy case, perhaps near the cheese & tofu.

last night when we were putting away our farm share, i decided just to
wash the beet greens and sautee them (in butter) and put them in the
fridge for use during the week. so the greens were already in the fridge
and i just microwaved them for 10 seconds to bring them to room temp. i
chopped the greens up a bit and put on top of the polenta pieces.

finally, i added bleu cheese. it was really nice combination - the
polenta has flavor, but it's not overpowering. beet greens have a nice
and not bitter taste. very earthy. and the bleu cheese i used was called
costello. it has a lot of flavor and totally made the dish.

my friend ceilidh and i made this once before a few weeks ago with
totally different things on top. the one i remember best was the sauteed
mushrooms and onions with shredded cheddar on top. and sauteed spinach
with a dollop of creme fraiche. you can use anything you have in the
fridge - pesto, feta cheese, avocado, etc.

i didn't feed it to the girls since they saw the mac and cheese in the
fridge and demanded it. but i think they would have liked a slice with
cheese, at the very least.

lastly, i have a method for washing greens from the farm that i like. i
clean the sink and fill it about halfway with cold water and put the
greens in. swish around and then leave them to sit for a few minutes.
the dirt will sink to the bottom and you can scoop up the greens and dry
and bag them, ready to use. last night i did two heads of lettuce
(breaking off the bottom so the leaves would separate). and then used
the same water for the beet greens. i didn't feel like drying and
bagging them, i felt like sauteeing them was just as much work and would
save some time later.

i am posting by email (there is a setting in blogger). hopefully the
picture comes through. if not, i'll add it later.

AMY

Curried Hakurei Turnips

2008-07-01T14:14:00.002-04:00

First things first -- these turnips are adorable. I know that’s not saying much, considering what turnips usually look like, but these are really the Hello Kitty of turnips. Small, plump and bright white. I wish I’d taken a photo of them before I chopped them up, because then you, our readers, would understand better why I spontaneously bought a vegetable that I had a. never heard of before and b. had no idea how to cook.
When I decided to make them I had to Google “Japanese white turnips” since I had managed to forget the name between buying them and bringing them home. I learned a few things -- like the fact that these turnips are sometimes called Tokyo turnips, or kabu, and that they are are a popular hybrid due to their mellow flavor and hardiness in colder temperatures.
Most of the recipes that came up were variations on a theme. Onions, the turnips, and sometimes chopped apple, cooked with curry and served with lemon wedges. In some places the recipe was credited to the Vegetarian Times cookbook. A couple of the sources were CSA Web sites, so I guess these little guys are popular with CSAs. And it makes sense -- they’re a mild root vegetable available in June, something to add to the mix besides just salad greens.
So I decided to make a version of this curry recipe, despite some initial misgivings,. I used a red onion instead of the recommended white because the white onion I bought for this recipe was commandeered by my husband for a (sadly, ill-fated) corn risotto. I used a non-apple version because it seemed like overkill and a little too autumnal for a muggy day in June.
Even in mid-cooking I was already coming up with a ton of other ways I’d like to cook these turnips -- they seem pretty versatile. After eating the dish I’m even more sure they could be used in a variety of ways. Stir-fry, definitely. But also, perhaps, grilled with some other veggies on shish kabobs and served with some sort of curry-lemon sauce? Yum.
I will definitely buy these turnips again but probably for a main course, not the side dish I made, which was flavorful but not especially innovative for such a cute and unique vegetable.

One chopped onion
2 tablespoons oil
5 or 6 harkurei, peeled and sliced thin (all the recipes said to peel them but it seemed sort of pointless, since they were so tender throughout)
2 teaspoons curry powder
1 teaspoon salt
one lemon, cut into wedges

Sauté the onion in the oil for a few minutes until translucent. Add the turnips, the curry powder and salt and cook until everything is tender. Squeeze some lemon juice over the dish before serving and serve with extra lemon wedges.

Minted Chickpea Side Salad

2008-06-29T20:21:00.004-04:00

Hi world.

Well, this is my first blog post ever. I guess welcome to me to the 21st century. Anyway, I was not sure when I was going to come up with a recipe that was shareable and that incorporated fresh, local, seasonal ingredients and then it happened. Our neighbor gave us a handful of basil from her garden so, of course, we decided to make the standard pasta with pesto. You know how to make that right? We make a vegan version with basil, pine nuts, olive oil, salt, a little garlic and I also add a little nutritional yeast to taste to add back in a hint of the Parmesan flavor. It also thickens it a bit. Blend with a hand blender and voila.

But we were talking about chick pea salad. So, I thought, if we are going to do pasta with pesto, and even though we add artichoke hearts and fresh cherry tomatoes to it, that would not quite be a meal. Where is the protein, right? All of a sudden I had a vision of a cool chickpea side salad, lemony in flavor. My husband said "got it" and came up with something really simple and delicious. Here is an approximate recipe. Proportions are always to taste, but this is reasonable accounting of what he did.

2 cans chick peas

½ red onion

Juice of one lemon

Three tablespoons of olive oil

A fistful of chopped fresh mint

A few pinches of salt

A pinch of cumin

OK, the main ingredient is canned chickpeas, but there is FRESH MINT! Very summery, very in season, local, farmer's marketish or backyard gardenish... right? Do I pass? Anyway, it was yummy and really hit the spot, so if it passes for you, try it!

Sorry, no photo! I ate it before I had the chance to photograph! Yum. Next time.

Cheers,

Stephanie

Zucchini Soufflé

2008-06-28T12:20:00.007-04:00

This week, we went to the Thursday farmers' market at Kendall Square. My husband Josh works near there, so we met up with him, did our shopping, and then had lunch together while listening to the summer concert series, which also happens every Thursday. The kids loved the music and were thrilled to see their dad in the middle of the day, so we'll probably make this our summer routine. The market was nice and had some interesting things other than vegetables, including bread, cheese, chocolate, and veggie/bread pockets we bought for lunch. There was even an ice cream stand from Christina's, but we managed to avoid that, since we knew we'd then face a whole summer of demands for ice cream.

The selection was much better this week, and we got some more chard, zucchini, broccoli, tomatoes, and peas (which we ate raw for lunch). The zucchini plants in our community garden plot are thriving, so I realized we will need a lot of good zucchini recipes this summer. Thankfully, I have The Classic Zucchini Cookbook which should give me a lot of good ideas. This week, I decided to try the Zucchini Soufflé. I've never made a soufflé before, and there was a warning on the side about how people consider soufflés challenging and likely to fail, but since part of the goal of this project is taking some culinary risks, I decided to give it a try. My brother and his girlfriend were planning to come to dinner, and the recipe is only supposed to serve 4, so I multiplied it by 1.5.

Ingredients:
4 medium sized zucchini, very thinly sliced
salt
2 tablespoons butter
2 tablespoons unbleached all-purpose flour
1 cup milk
1 cup grated Gruyére cheese
4 egg yolks, beaten
2 teaspoons fresh lemon juice
8 egg whites

Directions:

1. Preheat the oven to 350. Butter and flour a 2-quart cooking dish or four ramekins.
2. Slice the zucchini into very thin rounds, toss with salt in a colander, and let it sit for 30 minutes.
3. Melt the butter, mix in the flour, add the milk, and then wait for the sauce to thicken and boil.
4. Mix everything but the egg whites in a large bowl.
5. Beat the eggs whites until they are stiff and fold into the large bowl.
6. Put the mixture in the floured cooking dish, and then put the cooking dish inside a larger pan (like a casserole dish). Put the whole thing in the oven, and then fill up the casserole dish with water until it reaches halfway up the smaller dish.
7. The soufflé is done when the top is golden brown and raised, and when a toothpick inserted comes out dry (and not wet). Cooking time is 15-45 minutes, depending on size of dish.

I had never heard of Gruyére cheese before, but I found it easily at Trader Joe's. The prep involved for the soufflé was pretty intense. Several of the smaller steps were time consuming, such as slicing the zucchini, separating all the eggs, prepping the pans, and grating the hard cheese. I did as much prep as I could in the early afternoon, and then started cooking the rest around 5:00. Thankfully, we have an electric mixer, since even with that it took a really long time to beat the eggs sufficiently. I had everything in the oven by 5:30, which I thought would work out perfectly for dinner at 6:15. I thought it might even be done earlier since I split it into two separate dishes.

I checked on it frequently, but by 6:15 it was still looking no where near done. At 6:30, the top was just starting to brown. We took one out of the oven to see if it was ready, and decided to let the other cook for 5-10 more minutes. It looked dry inside, so we took some out to cool for the kids, and then remembered to take a picture.

We served it with a loaf of bread and the roasted broccoli as a side dish. We all love roasted broccoli, and it's very easy to make. Just drizzle olive oil over the florets and put it in the oven at 400 degrees until they look ready (about 20 minutes, usually, depending on the size of the florets). The broccoli was really expensive at the market, so the $3 bunch I bought only made a small bowlful, but I did try to take a nice picture of it.

The meal was not a huge hit with the kids. They both ate a lot of candy and cake at a late afternoon birthday party, so despite starting dinner on the late side, they did not seem very hungry. The toddler ate a lot of broccoli and tried the soufflé, but didn't like the texture of the zucchini and spit it out. The 3-year-old mostly ate bread. Below is a picture of the what the kids' plates looked like.

The adults all thought the meal was good, but not overwhelmingly impressive. It seemed to have come out right, without any soufflé disasters, but it was pretty bland. The eggs were perfectly fluffy, but even with the strong cheese added in, the meal just lacked flavor overall. My brother's girlfriend seemed to like it the most, but she said she loved zucchini, and was meeting our family for the first time, so of course she was going to say that.

I'm pretty sure I won't be making this again. For the effort that was involved, I don't think the final result was really worth it. It has opened me up to the idea of soufflés, though, and there are many other great recipes in that cookbook I hope to try this summer.

Lasagna with Chard, Ricotta and Walnuts

2008-06-24T06:44:00.002-04:00

This recipe is based on one from Local Flavors, one of my current favorite cookbooks, with my own minor changes. I didn’t have enough chard so I used half chard, half mustard and collard greens, and while the recipe originally called for fresh mozzarella, due to a shopping list mishap, I ended up using the pre-shredded stuff my husband picked up at the corner store.
The chard actually came from the farm stand at Drumlin Farm, which we visited with friends (shout-out to Katie, founder of the blog), late last week.
This dish has a few special steps that makes it a bit unwieldy for a weeknight dinner, but it can be made in advance or on a weekend. I liked that it’s a pasta dish that’s appealing to children and uses healthy greens, and it’s unique enough that you could make it for guests. A great recipe to have in the repertoire since you can substitute almost any dark and flavorful greens -- basically, whatever looks good at the farmer’s market. For our family of three this made enough for two ample dinners, and the meal held up well as leftovers.
My husband and I both loved the how flavorful the greens and walnuts combination made the dish -- they add a depth that many vegetable lasagnas lack. Our three-year-old daughter picked out the walnuts but ate some of everything else.

Ingredients:
1 cup chopped walnuts
salt and pepper
2 to three pounds of chard or other dark, flavorful greens
2 tablespoons olive oil plus more to oil the dish
3 large garlic cloves, minced
1/3 cup white wine (you can substitute vegetable broth, if you like)
1 cup ricotta cheese
1 cup grated parmesan
8 oz shredded mozzarella
1 and 1/4 cups milk
1 8 oz box lasagna noodles, precooked or uncooked, depending on your preference

1. Boil a large pot of water for the pasta. Preheat the oven to 400 degrees and toast the walnuts on a baking pan until they are gold and fragrant, about 7 to ten minutes. Chop finely and set aside.
2. When the water boils, add one tablespoon salt and the chard or other greens. Cook until tender, about five minutes, even if the water doesn’t return to a full boil. Scoop the chard into a colander and press out most of the water. Reserve some of the cooking liquid. Finely chop the greens.
3. Heat the oil in a saute pan and add the garlic and then the greens. Cook over medium high heat, turning frequently, for a few minutes, then add the wine and allow it to cook down. Turn off the heat.
4.Combine the ricotta, parmesan, and about two thirds of the shredded mozzarella in a bowl. Stir in 1/3 cup of the cooking water, then add the chard. Mix together and add salt and pepper to taste.
5. If you are using no-boil pasta, you can reheat the remaining chard water to use to soften them. If you are using boiled pasta, bring the chard water back to a boil or use a new pot to cook them. Lightly oil a 8x10 or 9x13 inch baking pan. Drizzle 1/4 cup of milk over the bottom of the pan. It won’t go on evenly because of the oil, but that is all right.
6. Layer the lasagna noodles on the pan, sprinkle with 1/4 cup of the milk, a third of the cheese and greens mixture, and 1/4 cup of the walnuts. Repeat twice, then add a fourth layer of noodles and top with the remaining milk, mozzarella and walnuts. Cover with foil and cook at 350 for 35 minutes. Take the foil off for the last ten minutes if you like a crispy top on your mozzarella. Let sit for ten minutes after cooking to set and then cut and serve.

Swiss Chard with Beets, Goat Cheese, and Raisins

2008-06-22T17:10:00.001-04:00

This is the first summer in many years we haven't joined a CSA. We've tried a couple different ones, but haven't found the right fit, so this season we decided to just shop at farmers' markets instead. When I go to a farmers' market, though, I mostly see vegetables I don't know how to cook, and tend not to buy much. I decided that this year, I need to see the market like a CSA share, where you just get what's there and then you figure out how to cook it.

I hadn't yet determined when I was going to fit farmers' market shopping into my summer schedule, but ended up making plans with fellow blogger Lee to go to Drumlin Farm with the kids. They have a farm stand right by the entrance, so I got to do my vegetable shopping and have a fun outing with the kids all at once. Being early in the season, there wasn't much there, but I left with two bunches of swiss chard, a bunch of beets, scallions, and basil.

I poked around a few cookbooks looking for a good recipe, but couldn't find many main dishes that involved swiss chard. Next, I turned to Google, and after searching for swiss chard and beets found this recipe for Swiss Chard with Beets, Goat Cheese, and Raisins.

Even though the ingredient list was simple, I was intimidated at first by all the steps involved, but it turned out to be fairly easy to cook. It was definitely time-consuming, since roasting the beets took an hour, but most of the time was spent waiting, and it was an easy recipe to start and stop while dealing with the continuous needs of young children. It can also be served either cold or at room temperature, so it could easily be prepared ahead of time.

I'll admit that I didn't have very high hopes for this recipe. The first thing I started cooking in the pot were the chopped up stalks of chard, and it just didn't look very appetizing. It didn't necessarily look any more attractive as I added in the other ingredients. By the end, though, when I had topped it with the beets, goat cheese, and pine nuts, it looked a lot better, though I was still doubtful about how good it would taste.

The recipe didn't mention serving it with anything, but I thought it needed some starch to go with it, so I made a pot of quinoa and we also had a loaf of bread. The meal seemed to have minimal protein, so I added more pine nuts than the recipe suggested to boost that a bit.

My kids aren't too picky, but my oldest (age 3.5) will often reject entire meals if he doesn't like one ingredient, so I try to make minor accommodations when I'm serving a one-pot kind of meal. I gave the kids each two plates. One had the food we were eating, and the other had a selection of the ingredients separated: raisins, beets, goat cheese, and pine nuts.

The results were surprisingly good. My husband's first reaction, sounding very much like my preschooler, was that there were too many different things in it, but after a few bites he changed his mind and decided he really liked it. The dish was surprising sweet, probably because of the raisins, and the goat cheese added creaminess while the pine nuts added some crunch. The kids barely touched the plates of mixed food, but ate a good amount from their separated plates, although neither was very fond of the beets.

I definitely plan to make this recipe again, but would make a few changes. I felt like the beets didn't add too much to the final meal, so I'd probably leave that out next time. They were a pain to prepare since after they were roasted, I had to wait for them to cool and then peel and chop them, which was all very messy. I would probably also prepare a simple protein side dish, since I feel like the meal was weak on protein. Overall, though, it was a success and a great start to our summer of cooking with local vegetables.

Blogger Bios

2008-06-22T16:55:00.011-04:00

Below are bios of some of the contributors of this blog. We welcome new writers who are also interested in cooking vegetarian meals for their families with local produce. If you are interested in contributing to our blog, on a regular or occasional basis, please email theveggieproject AT gmail DOT com.

Amy
amy and moshe weitzman live in arlington, MA with their two daughters. we belong to waltham community fields CSA this year. our favorite part of farm shares is the pick your own. i am always looking for yummy recipes with lots of vegetables in them.

Carla
We're a blended family of 6 with picky eaters, from 9-17! I am native New Englander with a passion for preserving regional farms by eating local. We've been members of Waltham Fields Community Farm CSA for 5 years, where I formerly served on the Board of Directors. Our favorite Summer tradition is to pack a picnic supper, bring along lots of friends, and go to our CSA farm for veggie pick-up night. I taught myself to can in order to preserve the multitude of veggies we get during the peak. Oh, and I'm a longtime vegetarian with hubby who likes steak!

Emily
I have been a vegetarian since I was an exchange student in Liberia, West Africa, in 1988. During my time in Africa, I felt much closer to my food sources – specifically, to the animals – than I ever had before that year. I realized that I was willing to eat meat only when I did not have to think about where it came from, and this made me uncomfortable. One of my favorite cookbooks is Mollie Katzen's "The Vegetable Dishes I Can't Live Without," and I'm currently using it to help me incorporate more vegetables into the center of what we eat on a daily basis. I'm married to a meat (and vegetable) lover, and we have two kids who eat poultry and tofu (and vegetables, sometimes!) with equal gusto. One major challenge I face is that I have noticed that the flavors that I love are not always the ones that other family members love, and that our kids tend to like food that is less spicy (less tasty!) than we do. We try to make just one main meal each night for all of us – sometimes making one recipe but adding meat to half and beans to the other half – but we are constantly trying to simplify this process.

Katie
I became a vegetarian at age 9, when I looked down at the lamb I was eating for dinner and realized it was a dead lamb. My omnivorous husband Josh and I have two kids, born 10/04 and 10/06, and we are raising the kids as vegetarians until they are old enough to choose for themselves. We are committed to supporting small farms and eating locally, and try to always consider the environmental impact of our family. We have been a member of CSAs in the past, but this year will be shopping at the farmers' markets.

Lee
I spent most of my working life as a journalist in New York. Now I’m a stay-at-home-mom, occasional freelance writer, and would-be novelist in Cambridge, Ma.

I became a vegetarian after meeting my husband when we were both in our early 20s. I was an environmentalist but not vegetarian; he had been veg since he was a teenager. After about a year of dating I became a vegetarian as well. We even had a vegetarian wedding -- and our families and friends still talk about the food we served, almost eight years later.

But as much as I love animals my vegetarianism has always sprung from my feelings about the environment. It’s been a short-hand way for me to limit my own impact on the earth. Eating whole and local foods is a natural outgrowth of that, for me. I also love to bake my own bread and make my own cheese, and would probably grow a lot more of my own vegetables if my “farmlands” encompassed more than the patio of an urban townhouse.

We’re raising our daughter vegetarian, though we plan to give her the choice decide for herself when she reaches her preteen years. Even if she choses to eat meat I sincerely hope the she keeps hold of the things we’ve taught her about where her food comes from, and the effect of what she does on the world around her.

“Only when the last tree has died and the last river has been poisoned and the last fish has been caught will we realize we cannot eat money.” Native American saying

Nili

I live in East Arlington with my partner, Todd Bearson, my five year old son, and my almost-toddling daughter. I've recently read Barbara Kingsolver's Animal Vegetable Miracle and Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan so I'm quite jazzed to try to cook more using seasonal, locally grown produce. We're generally vegetarian, but not vegan, and occasionally give the kids chicken and fish. My son is so picky that I don't imagine he'll eat anything I make for the blog. Unless it's a dessert. =-) I've belonged to CSA's in the past, but got tired of all these beautiful vegetables going bad in my refrigerator while I didn't cook them. Now I'm trying to shop more at the farmer's market and hoping this blog experiment will expand my cooking repertoire.

Rachel

My family, which includes myself, my husband, and my two boys (a 4 year old and a 14 month old), are members of the Waltham Fields Community Farm CSA for the 2nd year. We try to eat as locally as possible, especially in the summer when it is most easily accomplished. We tend to treat our vegetables very simply, and my 4 year old really just wants it all raw on a plate. We are trying to have fun with new recipes, though admittedly we do tend to fall back on a few tried and true favs. One of our goals for this summer's CSA experience is to let no vegetable die a wilty/moldy/withered death in the back of our fridge...last year there were a few casualties.

Sally

WhatACard, aka Sally, lives in the suburbs of Boston with her husband and twin boys who were born in July, 2005. While the whole family are omnivores, they're having a love affair with vegetables, new recipes, unusual ingredients, and local food. Or at least the adults are. The boys are devoted bread-and-cheese-atarians. They're all enjoying their first season as shareholders at Waltham Fields Community Farms and Sally also loves to shop the farmers' markets with her boys.