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.

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

Blues and gooses

So, as part of the CSA share for this week we headed out to Heron Pond Farm for some PYO blueberries along with our friends R & E from the wilds of western NH.

First, we noticed the new paint job on the farmstead...  Check it out (sorry about the head-tilt, I tried to fix it)!

Then, out to the fields for us.  First, some blues (8lbs, mmmmm, so tasty).  Then, we noticed some gooseberry plants out at the end of the very last row.  They looked a bit sad, but they were absolutely covered with berries that were quickly heading towards overripe (otherwise known as dang tasty RIGHT NOW).  Turns out Andre is not a fan of gooseberries so he told us we could have a few...

They made it home with only a few fed to the passengers en route.  Pick all the stems and flowers off them and we've got about 8 cups total.  2 cups, along with a diced apple and handful of blues got tossed with a bit of sugar and are baking under a layer of oats, butter, and brown sugar.  

The other 6 cups have been turned into the jam seen above.  First, boil them with a slice of ginger.  Then, into the food mill to get all the flesh and juice but leave the rather tough skins.  Then, back to the pot along with 4 1/2 sugar.  Bring it all to a hard boil for a minute.  Immediately mix in 3/4 of a 6oz packet of pectin (I used it all, I'm a crazy man!).  

Put in jars.  Turns out that this made exactly 2.4 pint jars of jam.  We sent the rest home with E&R as payment for their labors.  If you actually had 8c of gooseberries you'd use 6c of sugar and a whole packet of pectin.

I boiled the jars for 10 minutes.  R said they just popped to indicate that they've sealed.  That's a bit of summer that we'll find sometime in the winter.