1/4 of the year?

Wow... An entire season has gone by since the last post here.

Brief summary: We've moved from the summer bounty to the root veggies of winter, the last hardy brassicas from outdoors, and some greenhouse greens.

This week's share:

4lbs of potato

2lb of carrot (how will we last?)

1 stalk of brussels

Dino Kale

1 kholrabi

turnips (left there)

3 parsnips (I'm gonna make parsnip chips)

2 heads of lettuce

It might be the last brussels of the season, so sad. The kale is also likely to be the end of the season, also very sad. We cooked them both up last night just after bringing them home and dang tasty.

Bread-and-Butter Pickles

For all those slicers..  I've been saving mine for a couple weeks in order to pound out a batch of these.  I've got 1 jar left from the ones I did last year that I've been saving.  Now that 7 more pints are in I'll move the old ones to the fridge and start using em without fear.

6 lbs of 4- to 5-inch pickling cucumbers

8 cups thinly sliced onions (about 3 pounds)

1/2 cup canning or pickling salt

4 cups vinegar (5 percent)

4-1/2 cups sugar 2 tbsp mustard seed –or 3T ground mustard

1-1/2 tbsp celery seed

1 tbsp ground turmeric

1 cup pickling lime (optional- for use in variation below for making firmer pickles)

Yield: About 8 pints

Procedure: Wash cucumbers. Cut 1/16-inch off blossom end and discard. Cut into 3/16-inch slices.

Combine cucumbers and onions in a large bowl. Add salt.

Cover with 2 inches crushed or cubed ice. Refrigerate 3 to 4 hours, adding more ice as needed.

Combine remaining ingredients in a large pot. Boil 10 minutes.

Drain and add cucumbers and onions and slowly reheat to boiling.

Fill jars with slices and cooking syrup, leaving 1/2-inch headspace.

Adjust lids and process according to the recommendations (15 minutes at a boil) or use low-temperature pasteurization treatment. The following treatment results in a better product texture but must be carefully managed to avoid possible spoilage. Place jars in a canner filled half way with warm (120º to 140ºF) water.

Then, add hot water to a level 1 inch above jars. Heat the water enough to maintain 180 to 185ºF water temperature for 30 minutes. Check with a candy or jelly thermometer to be certain that the water temperature is at least 180ºF during the entire 30 minutes. Temperatures higher than 185ºF may cause unnecessary softening of pickles.

babaganoush

I looooove baba ganoush.  Absolutely adore it.  I can't think of anything better to do with egg plant, seriously.  Sure, eggplant parm is great, what with it's saucy and cheezy goodness, but mmmmmmmmmm baba ganoush.

Here's how we make ours (it's crazy easy):

Take 16oz o eggplant (1 large) and roast it on the grill with some woodchips for the smoke-effect for a while (say 1 hour at about 350-400--you can do the same sans smoke in an oven).

Then, once it's fully collapsed put it in a colander for 30 minutes.  This has 2 purposes; (1) it cools, and (2) a bit of water will come out.

Mix:  2T tahinni, 3T lemon juice, 2T parsley (if you have it/want it), 2T olive oil, 1t salt, some fresh ground pepper, and 3 cloves of minced garlic in a bowl.

Open and scrape the eggplant remnants into the same bowl.  Make sure to scrape the sides down good, that's where the smokiest bits are.

Mix it all up with a fork and let it sit for 30 minutes.

Eat like a pig-hog with whatever bread-product is about.  I just cleared out 90% of a double batch for lunch with some pita.  I'd take a picture but neither the empty bag of pita nor the mostly empty container of babaganoush is terribly impressive to look at right now.

Dinner Monday, How to Eat Supper

Lynn Casper's book How to Eat Supper is amazing.  We haven't found anything in there that we don't love.  It has one of our favorite pasta dishes.  Here's the plan:

1) Take 5 of the tomatoes that you've been hording for 2 weeks of CSA share, slice the tops off, core them and grate them into a bowl.

2) Chop up the whole head of garlic that you got last week and slice up a sweet onion.

3) Pick some of the basil that Kate has been growing in a planter in the yard and chop it up along with a bunch of parsley.  Finally, round up 1T (large) of tomato paste, 1/2 c of leftover wine, 2t of cinnamon, 1.5t oregano, 1t of hot pepper flakes or a dried good flavored pepper that you've ground up and 1lb of round pasta (say ziti).  Oh, right, and the leftover ricotta salata and some other cheese so that it's about 1-1.5 c.

Boil the pasta for 8 minutes (al dente according to the box) and rinse it in cold water when it's done. 

Film a 12inch saute pan with oil and when it's warm throw in the onion, parsley, lots of salt and pepper.  Saute the onion until it's a nice brown.  Then add the tomato paste, garlic, oregano, pepper, and cinnamon.  Cook for 1 min, then the wine, cook for 1 min.

Toss in the tomatoes and let it all cook for 8 minutes then mix in the pasta, cheez and basil.  Then eat like a pig-hog!

If you feel compelled to add some meat (chicken or lamb according to the text) do so after you've added the tomatoes, close the lid and let it hang out until it's cooked.  If you need more liquid add a bit of the pasta water, it's a great starchy liquid that helps sauces sooooo much.

Co-blogger foods

My co-blogger has pounded out some foods that might get posts of their own sometime, but not now...

1) Another incarnation of the beet/ricotta salata salad.

2) Tempeh & new potato hash.  That was some tasty good stuff.  I ate way too much of it.  Sadly, no pictures due to the aforementioned tasty part.

Dinner--Wednesday? Tuesday? Last week...

So, I had a bunch of Zukes lying around taunting me for not eating them and I had just watched an Alton Brown episode on stuffed tomatoes so I though, sure, let's stuff em up.

I took 3 of them, sliced them in half oiled them a bit and tossed them onto the grill since I was busy cooking up some chicken and other veggies.

Hollowed them out and put into them a mixture of red lentils (a miracle food) and some new potatoes.  They were spiked with onion and some curry powder, both hot and mild along with a bunch of salt and pepper.  Along with the guts mix all that up and shove them back into the zuke shells.

On top of that I had some bread crumbs that I'd toasted in some butter and some crumbled ricotta salata (hello Golden Harvest!).  Put it all under the broiler, pay attention and pft!  Good stuff.

CSA this week!

3 tomatoes  
2 zucchini or SS  
2 slicers or 4 pickles  
1 pt blueberries or 1 qt pyo  
3 onions
1 head garlic  
2 eggplant  
1 pepper
1.5 lbs new potatoes  
12 ears sweet corn  

1 choice of kohlrabi, beets, cabbage, raddichio, escarole, napa cabbage

Do you hear Baba Ganoush in the future?  I do! 

So behind! CSA last week...

2 tomatoes  
2 slicers or 4 pickles  
1.5 lbs beans  
4 carrots
2 sweet onions  
1 garlic  
1 lettuce  

1 pt BB or 1 qt pyo

1 bell pepper or 1 eggplant

12 ears corn

1/2 lb new potatoes

1 bell pepper
1 eggplant
1lb new potatoes

tabbouleh-esque

If you don't subscribe to the NPR Splendid Table web newsletter, it's worthwhile - they don't send messages too often, and they provide seasonally-appropriate recipes. With the goods from the farm this week, I couldn't not make the tabouleh recipe that came in this week's newsletter:

Cooking from the Garden: Best Recipes from "Kitchen Gardener" edited by Ruth Lively (The Taunton Press, Inc., 2010). Recipe by Susan Belsinger. Copyright © 2010 by The Taunton Press.

6 to 8 servings

This is a traditional-style tabbouleh with the added flavors of garbanzos, pine nuts, and currants. It can stand on its own as a vegetarian main course served on fresh greens with good, crusty bread or warm pita, and perhaps olives and cheese. If you have them on hand, scallions are a nice substitute for the onion.

* 1-1/2 cups bulgur wheat
* 1 medium-large tomato, diced
* 1 medium cucumber or 2 pickling cucumbers, peeled and diced
* Generous 1/2 cup diced onion [I omitted the onion - I don't like raw onion]
* 1/4 cup olive oil
* 1/4 cup freshly squeezed lemon juice [I added about 1 tsp balsamic vinegar]
* 1 teaspoon salt
* Freshly ground black pepper
* 1 large clove garlic, minced [i added more of this]
* One 15-ounce can garbanzo beans, drained or 1 cup cooked
* 1/3 cup lightly toasted pine nuts
* 1/3 cup currants, soaked in water for 10 minutes and drained
* 1/2 cup chopped fresh spearmint
* 1/2 cup minced fresh parsley
* A few pinches each of cinnamon, allspice, and cayenne

Put the bulgur in a large bowl and add 1-1/2 cups boiling water. Stir and let stand for 30 minutes to 1 hour. If necessary, drain excess water from the bulgur. Add the tomato, cucumber, and onion, and season lightly with salt and pepper.

In a small bowl, combine the oil, lemon juice, salt, pepper, and garlic and stir well with a fork.

Add the garbanzos, pine nuts, and currants to the bulgur. Sprinkle with the mint and parsley and add the spices. Drizzle the dressing over the tabbouleh and toss well. Let the salad stand for about 30 minutes before serving and taste again for seasoning; you may need a little more oil, lemon juice, salt, or pepper.

The salad can be prepared in advance and kept at cool room temperature, or if refrigerated, allowed to come to room temperature before serving.

Crisp-updated

So...  The crisp is done.  It looks like this.

Soon, it will have some whipped cream put on top of it.  Then we will eat it like pig-hogs.

Recipe:
4 cups fruit (2 c gooseberries, 1 c blueberries, 1 c peeled and diced apple)
1/2 c sugar

1 c each flour, brown sugar, oats
1 stick butter
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp each ground ginger and cinnamon

mix fruit and sugar in an 8x8 ungreased baking dish.

in food processor, pulse flour, brown sugar, baking soda, salt, spices and butter together to make coarse crumbs (about 10-12 1-second pulses). or, use pastry cutters or your hands to mix them together. mix in oats. pour mixture over fruit.

bake in oven about 30 minutes or until golden and crispy on top.