Yummy Yards CSA Boxes 14, 15

Leek and Potato Soup

Figured I’d better have a go at leek and potato soup at least once in my life, having never eaten it before.  I see now why it is so beloved.  I was very sorry when the left-overs ran out.

• Several leeks, sliced white and light green bits only
• 1 onion, diced
• 2 bay leaves
• 4 Yukon Gold or Russet potatoes, cubed
• About 1 cup left-over roasted carrots
• Vegetable broth
• All the dark green part of the leeks, scrubbed, but left whole
• Small dash Matouk’s hot sauce (the secret ingredient)

1. Tie the leek greens into a bundle with kitchen twine.  Failing that, put kitchen twine on your Christmas list, and find some other way to keep the leeks together, such as using an old jar wrench, which works better for this than it does for opening jars.
2. Melt butter in soup pot.  Sauté onions and sliced leeks.  Add bay leaf, vegetable broth, potatoes and leek bundle to pot.  With lid on, gently simmer the bejiggers out of it until the leek bundle is very, very limp.  Remove leek bundle and bay leaf. 
3. Purée with hand blender.  Add just one smallish dash of Matouk’s.  Adjust for salt and pepper.  Grab your Phentex slippers, a large slice of hot, buttered, toasted sourdough bread and enjoy.

Roasted Brussels Sprouts with Maple Syrup

Until this evening I would not have called myself a fan of the Brussels sprout.  Boiling really does them no favours.  But roasting!  Crunchy, tender, sweet, salty, only bitter enough to be intriguing.  A whole different little vegetable!

• 1 stem-full of Brussels sprouts, removed from stem, de-bugged and cut in half length-wise
• 1 tablespoon olive oil
• 1 tablespoon maple syrup
• sea salt and fresh pepper

Toss halved Brussels sprouts with oil and maple syrup.  Spread out, cut side down, on baking sheet.  Sprinkle with salt and pepper.

Roast in convection oven at 400 degrees for 15 to 20 minutes.  The outside leaves will get deliciously crispy and almost uncomfortably brown.  That’s when they are perfectly done.

Roasted Cabbage with Fennel

This is a Martha Stewart recipe:  http://www.marthastewart.com/315062/roasted-cabbage-wedges .

I actually followed the recipe, though I cut my cabbage in wedges, rather than rounds, and used fennel in order to free up a precious Tupperware container for the kids’ lunches.  I found the fennel growing in a back alley and just happened to have a pair of kitchen scissors in the glove box.  Unrolled the window, looked furtively left and right,  and snip!  A lovely sprig of fennel.  It hung on a cupboard handle for about 10 days until very dry.  I had been intending to use it for chai, but man!  I needed that container!  And it made for a very good cabbage dish.

Later I used some of this roasted cabbage, along with left-over roasted rutabaga, turnips, mushrooms and hot Italian sausage to make Bubble and Squeak. 

Bubble and Squeak

Chuck whatever left-over cooked veggies you have into a cast iron pan with butter and whatever left-over cooked meat you have.  Brown on the bottom, add salt and pepper, then enjoy on a crisp Fall afternoon wearing Phentex slippers.  Especially delicious with your Auntie Jane’s garden fresh tomatoes, sliced, with salt and pepper.

Fresh Ugly Tomato, Roasted Aubergine and Chocolate Pasta Sauce

Didn’t feel up to the task of removing all the scabby bits from those late season, ugly, cracked tomatoes, so I washed them well and threw them whole into a pot with an onion and some herbs.  When it was all nice and mushy I passed it through my food mill to get rid of the scabs, skins and seeds and made an interesting little pasta sauce:

• 1 onion, diced
• Olive oil
• Tomatoes, as many as you have.  10-ish?
• 2 or 3 bay leaves
• 1 tsp. oregano
• 1 tsp. basil
• 1/2 square unsweetened baker’s chocolate
• 5 or 6 roasted baby eggplants
• Salt and pepper
• Capers

Sauté the onion in olive oil until soft.  Add tomatoes, bay leaves, oregano, basil.  Simmer gently until the tomato is very soft.  Cool slightly then pass through the food mill.  Add chocolate.  Pass eggplant through food mill, then add to pot.  Simmer gently and taste for salt and pepper.  Serve on pasta with lots of capers on top.  The capers really make the dish.  Don’t forget the capers.

Roasted Green Tomato Salsa with Tequila

Lastly, here is a recipe to use up all those un-ripened tomatoes that are about to get spoiled by the first frost.  This is an earthy, tangy, almost murky-flavoured salsa for chips, on top of eggs, inside quesadillas, mixed into fajita innards.  Very interesting and (dare I say it?) mature.  I plan to freeze it in cubes to add to Mexican dishes throughout the winter.  A little goes a long way.

• Green tomatoes
• 1 tsp. olive oil
• Cumin seed
• Chile flakes
• 1 or 2 jalapeno peppers
• Large shot tequila
• Large shot lemon juice
• 3 green onions, chopped
• Salt

Wash the green tomatoes and place in a baking dish with jalapeno peppers, olive oil, cumin and red pepper.  Shake to coat evenly with oil.  Roast at 400 degrees until tomatoes are soft, about 40 minutes.  When cool pulse in food processor with tequila and  lemon.   Add the onions at the end and taste for salt.

Yummy Yards CSA Box #4

OK, Box #4, in its entirety:

Well, I’d never seen a purple cauliflower before. Crunchy and sweet. With such a cool cauliflower in the box I decided to use up the regular old white one in the fridge in a curry, along with all the turnip greens: to a splash of oil in a large pot add spices: about 1 Tbsp. each fresh ginger, ground coriander and cumin, 1 Tsp. each turmeric and salt, a few dried chillies, 2 bits of cinnamon, 10 cloves (about 6 too many, if you ask me); add a can of diced tomatoes and simmer a bit. Then add the cauliflower and gently cook, covered, about 5 minutes. Add all the turnip greens at the end and let the steam cook them, just 3 or 4 few minutes. It was too runny, so I drained off a lot of the liquid and drank it out of a mug (or at least, I should have used a mug and then it would have seemed more like a cup of yummy curry Bovril and less like just a weird thing to do). Lots of left-overs, which is always a good thing.

We ate the actual cauliflower from box #4 raw, mostly, but the last bits of it I steamed. I don’t recommend that. It lost its lovely purple colour and instead just looked a bit off. Tasted fine, though.

Finally did something with the lavender from box #2: banana lavender muffins! Very dainty-flavoured and elegant. Here is my much-travelled recipe for muffins, in general. I make 2 dozen at a time, and freeze them. Breakfast is 2 frozen muffins, microwaved for one minute, and a cup of hot chai. Ahhh. Maybe a spoonful of ginger jam. Seriously good for what ails you.

Basic Muffins

Yield: 24

• 2 cups whole wheat flour (can sub in a little white)
• 2 cups any sort of mixed grains, in any proportion: oatmeal, cornmeal, flax, chia, bran, sunflower seeds, all the remaining weird flours you bought to try a gluten-free diet for your son in the hopes of stemming his raging hyperactivity, etc.
• 2 Tsp. baking soda
• 2 cups soured milk, yoghurt, or regular milk (I use a can of evaporated milk mixed with about 3 Tbsp. lemon juice, and enough water to make up to 2 cups)
• 2 eggs
• A very rough 1/2 – 2/3 cup sweetener: honey, maple syrup, chocolate chips (my current fave, and surprisingly low calorie), whatever you feel like using, or none at all
• A very rough 6 Tbsp. oil or melted butter. I like grape seed oil.
• About 2 cups of whatever fruit or veg you are in the mood for, or whatever is starting to get too ripe in the fruit bowl: banana, apple, crusty applesauce, dates (really good), zucchini, pineapple, etc.
• Optional walnuts or other nuts, lavender, chai spices

Mix wet and add the fruit. Mix dry. Mix together. Add nuts. 15-20 mins at 325 convection oven.

OK, full disclosure. My mom and I pre-mix the dry ingredients in a marathon session once or twice a year, bag it, and freeze the bags. Then all I need to do is mix in the wet ingredients and presto! Two dozen delicious muffins! Good for you, and taste good, too. I get a little anxious when the freezer has fewer than a dozen frozen muffins in it. Also, this recipe won first prize in a contest put on by the BC Dieticians, so my husband has now stopped teasing me about how many I eat. And how often.

Also, a very good investment: a muffin scoop.

Tonight, if I get any time to myself in the kitchen: fennel and orange salad, left-over curried cauliflower on rice, and fava bean dip with garlic, olive oil and lemon juice. And plain noodles for the kids. Sigh.

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Wow. Those fava beans were a revelation for me. Creamy, delicious, easy to prepare. Want more.

I made a stunning green dip: remove beans from the pod, then steam for a minute or two in the microwave with just a wee bit of water in the bottom of the bowl, until you can barely squish one between your fingers. Shell the beans again, this time removing the tough membrane around the individual beans. Process the beans with a clove of garlic, some lemon juice and some olive oil. Splash, splash-like. And sea salt. I used whole wheat sourdough bread, toasted, to dip. It was so good I could have eaten three or four times as much as the recipe made.

The fennel was transformed into a perky little salad: finely slice root, stems and fronds of fennel. Add two or three diced, juicy oranges, one green apple cut into matchsticks, some lemon juice, olive oil and salt. A very interesting salad, though not for everyone. I think I ate the whole thing myself. Happily, not nearly as liquorice-y as I had expected. I especially liked the juice left at the bottom of the bowl.

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I’m excited about finding a proper use for carrot tops. I stripped the frondy bits off the stems and chopped them well with a clove or two of garlic. It made sort of a dry-ish pesto, newly dubbed Carrot Top Pesto, which I proceeded to add to pretty much everything I cooked last week: mixed into scrambled eggs (husband enthusiastically declared it to be delicious, and even pickiest child ate it); as a topping for pizza with mushrooms, cherry tomatoes and sliced baby zucchini straight from the garden; with sun-dried tomatoes, mushrooms and regular pesto on pasta; on pan-seared tofu. Kind of like parsley: looks great, doesn’t taste like much, but it’s green so it must be good for you.

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The turnips were very tasty lightly steamed with carrots, then caramelized with a lump of butter and two spoons-full of brown sugar. Neither child dared try it, even though we called it “candied carrots”, but maybe with a few more exposures….