Strawberry-rhubarb cobbler

Today, after unsuccessfully searching 5 grocery stores for pectin and spending far too long in the car driving around, I ditched my grand plan to make strawberry rhubarb jam today, though I am holding fast to my aspirations to can something this summer. So, I whipped my strawberries and rhubarb into a quick cobbler. I used this recipe but increased the sugar to a half cup-- in retrospect, a quarter cup probably would have worked, although I like cobbler dough sweet. I also used cornstarch for thickening the strawberry-rhubarb mixture instead of tapioca. Nothing like a good cobbler on a summer afternoon :)

Greek Pasta Salad with Asparagus

After a 7 mile run this morning-- the longest yet with my new half-marathon training group--I was dying for some carbs. I'd been planning on making this asparagus salad with tomatoes, kalamata olives, and feta, but couldn't resist turning it into a pasta salad. Besides the pasta, I also added red onions and artichoke hearts, and used my quick and easy solution for a dressing: store-bought Italian. Delicious, and will probably last me far longer than I want to it for, one of the drawbacks of cooking-for-one (as if I don't already have a fridge full of leftover soup, chicken, frittata... seriously, my leftovers last forever).

Caldo Verde

Last week I thought about making Caldo Verde-- a Portuguese kale soup-- with my first batch of kale. But it was warm and sunny out and soup just didn't seem right. Today, with a fridge full of kale and rain streaming down my window panes, the idea seemed much more appealing. I based my soup off the recipe I just linked to (here it is again), but with a few variations. The chouriço that the recipe calls for is a smoked sausage. I was using raw chorizo so I cooked it all-- along with garlic and onions-- before I started, then took out about three-quarters of it to set aside before I boiled the red potatoes in that same pan. Once the potatoes were getting mushy, I realized I didn't really want to take everything out and food process it-- I like my soup chunky, for one thing, and was too hungry to add this step, for another thing. So I simply stuck my potato masher right into the pot, and mashed up the potatoes while keeping the onion and chorizo chunks whole, and some bigger chunks of pototo remaining. Then I added the chorizo I'd set aside and kale and let it simmer for quite awhile--closer to 20 minutes, I'd say, than the 2 minutes the recipe calls for. In the end, my potaotes were so cooked and mashed up it probably wasn't any different in texture than if I'd pureed them.

The soup turned out great-- I appreciated the taste of the kale in this much more than when I made curried turnovers with the kale last week (curry does tend to mask flavors I suppose). I would definitely consider making this soup with other greens-- spinach for example-- but liked the flavor of the kale a lot. The chorizo I got was nice and spicy too, which added to the flavor of the soup.

Week 3 pickup

Lettuce, spring onions, kale, asparagus, oregano, mixed greens, radishes, rhubarb.

Mojito-Marinated Chicken

With lots of extra mint lying around, I couldn't resist when I saw this recipe for mojito-marinated chicken. I made my own mint syrup (and even have some left over to make real mojitos!), and marinated the chicken overnight to give it some extra flavour boost. Today, I baked it in the oven for ten minutes then stuck it on the grill. Came out great; perfect with a quick salad.

Spring Onion-Chorizo Frittata

This barely uses any of my CSA food-- just a handful of spring onions-- so I hesitate to blog it. But today I had a track workout with my running group and was needing some good protein afterward. Plus, I'm surprisingly out of most of my CSA veggies from last Wednesday. Anyway, I'd bought some chorizo earlier in the week, thinking of making caldo verde with my kale, but the kale got all used up in my turnovers. And what better way to get a good mix of post-run protein (eggs and chorizo) and carbs (potatoes) than a quick and easy frittata. I originally learned how to make these from Salva, a Spanish post-doc who worked in a lab at the same time as me. He used the "flip" technique of getting the whole frittata cooked through, but with my new oven-proof cast iron pan I've been wanting to try cooking the frittata through in the oven. So I fried up some spring onions and chorizo, added potatoes that had been boiled for 15 minutes or so, and then mixed the whole thing with egg. I cooked the bottom on the stove, then put the pan in the oven for 10 minutes-- the last few minutes let cheese melt on top. I definitely prefer the oven to Salva's technique of flipping the frittata-- I never really got that down!

Curried Kale-White Bean Turnovers

Scanning the web for kale recipes, I came across lots of soups, but decided today wasn't a soup day at all. Instead, these Jamacian Style Curried Kale and White Bean 'Patties' looked like something new and different to try. I basically followed the recipe, but added lots of extra crushed red pepper and curry powder. And then decided to fold my mixture into triangle-shaped turnovers with the pastry dough, instead of making "patties" in muffin tins. Worked out great and made enough to last me three or four meals, with salads using my mixed greens.

Rhubarb Monkey Bread

I'd never heard of Monkey Bread until I saw a post on it at The Pioneer Woman and since then have been dying to try it. Then, I saw another blog (which escapes me right now) make mini-Monkey Breads, in muffin tins. I was sold. But with all this rhubarb in my fridge, I couldn't make a dessert without incorporating some in. I followed the Pillsbury Recipe-- I figure Pillsbury has it down when it comes to something made with biscuits, sugar, and butter-- and added in chunks of rhubarb. The rhubarb was superb at balancing out what would be otherwise a very intensely sweet dessert-- perhaps a bit too sweet, in fact, even for my sweet tooth. Big hit in my book! My good camera is temporarily on the fritz, so these pics aren't that great...

Week 2 Pickup

Not too different from last week-- Rhubarb, spring onions, radishes, greens, lettuce, mint, and kale. (No asparagus and no spinach, but kale is a nice addition-- I've never used it before)

Ricotta Gnocchi with Spinach

I'm not an official member of The Daring Kitchen, but when I saw their inaugural challenge was Ricotta Gnocchi, I took it as a good reason to try it out. Ricotta is by far my favorite dairy product. For almost a month in college I ate nothing but ricotta mixed with sugar and cinnamon-- I kid you now. Then, I got a pizzelle maker and discovered I could make pizzelle cannollis. I lived off those for another month. Anyway, if I'd known how easy ricotta gnocchi were to make, they probably would have been another month-long obsession. I'd seen recipes before, and thought my gnocchi would fall apart the second they hit water, or shortly thereafer. But I stand corrected.

At 8pm after a track workout, I was famished and didn't have time to drain the ricotta, or to let the gnocchi sit for an hour after shaping it. So I added a little flour (maybe half a cup) straight into the ricotta mixture that the Daring Kitchen recipe calls for, in addition to coating the gnocchi in flour. Everything worked out perfectly. The whole process to make 2 dozen gnocchi was probably 20 minutes start to finish. I added some spinach-- the last of my week of CSA food-- into the butter mixture that the recipe calls for, and let the whole thing cook for a couple minutes. Delish. Very creamy. Next time I'll experiment with adding seasonings, or spinach, straight into the ricotta, but I didn't want to overdo it the first time.

Almond-strawberry-rhubarb cake

I wasn't sure what to do with my rhubarb this week. I'm not a big pie fan, and I wanted to try something I hadn't tried before. This rhubarb almond cream crostada was a big contender, but on a Monday night I didn't feel like I had time to make my own dough, pastry cream, and assemble these. But the idea of rhubarb and almond had become engrained in my head. So what did I do? Google "rhubarb almond" of course. I finally found this: a rhubarb almond cake that looked easy enough. But when I went to the store to buy almonds, I spotted some strawberries that actually looked decent, and I couldn't help but buy them. So my version of the cake is almond, strawberry, and rhubarb. I added a half teaspoon of almond extract to the bottom dough, also, to really accent the almond.

It turned out delicious, but flatter than I expected. Most of this was due to my springform pan-- ten inches instead of the nine the recipes calls for, so the dough was spread pretty thin. I didn't realize this until I'd made the batter, or I would have made more. But the blend of the three flavors is great and I'll certainly keep this on my rhubarb recipe list.

Lots of leftovers for workmates tomorrow!

Meat on a veggie stick

In addition to being a big fan of fresh veggies, I'm a big fan of meat. So when I was browsing TasteSpotting for asparagus recipes to use up my asparagus, and I spotted this (originally from here), I knew it'd be dinner tonight. Steak plus asparagus= food heaven, in my book.

I bought the thinnest cut meat I could find at the grocery store, which unfortunately wasn't very thin (and I don't have any knives sharp enough to cut beef, unfortunately. My knife set is pretty pathetic). But everything worked out. Boiled the asparagus for 2 minutes. Wrapped meat around each stalk. Marinated in Ponzu sauce. Then headed outside to grill. Served with peanut sauce. Easy as pie and tasty as can be.



Will definitely make again. Only change will be making peanut sauce, or trying a different brand. The bottle I ended up with was far too salty for my taste. Tomorrow: spinach-ricotta gnocchi.

Spinach-mint chicken penne

It's so great having all these vegetables in my fridge-- not needing to go to the grocery store with a whole list of ingredients to buy, but instead basing my dinner around what I already have. I wanted to use up some spinach and mint tonight, since it already looked a little wilty, but didn't want something too complex, time-consuming, or needing too many ingredients I didn't have. So I started browsing Epicurious for spinach recipes, and got inspired by a simple spinach pasta salad with some chicken for protein. I figured I'd use mint instead of rosemary, and both the tops and bottoms of my spring onions. I was a little hesitant about the mint-spring onion-spinach combination, but it turned out great-- garlicky with a little extra kick and very fresh and green tasting.

What I did: Sauteed the spring onions and a few cloves of garlic in olive oil, then added chicken-- one breast cut into fairly small chunks. Once the chicken was cooked, I added my whole batch of spinach, mint, and some chopped greens from the spring onions. Everything smelled incredibly fresh. Meanwhile, I was cooking half a pound of penne, and dumped it straight into the pan of greens when it was al dente. I added a little chicken broth and let the whole thing simmer for five minutes, then covered liberally with parmesan. Served it still steaming hot-- made about 3 servings, I'd say, so will last for me for lunch and dinner tomorrow.

Week 1 Pickup

My sister and I decided to split a CSA share this summer. Growing up in Vermont, summer was all about fresh food for our whole family, whether it was bought from one of many nearby farm stands or picked by hand at our grandparents' farm. We're both in the DC suburbs now, and while there are some closeby Farmers' Markets, I find it hard to motivate myself to get moving early enough on the weekends to hit them up in time to get the best produce. Last summer, I ate a depressingly small amount of fresh veggies-- tomatoes here and there, some broccoli, a dozen ears of corn I trekked to a farm stand specifically to get.

So this summer, in an attempt not only to eat more healthily and experiment with food I don't usually buy, but also to support local agriculture, I signed up for the Sandy Spring CSA. It's a CSA that works with Calvert Farm, further upstate in Maryland. I figured I can't eat a whole share myself, but Paige was game for splitting it. Since we signed up a month ago, I've been eagerly awaiting our first pickup. Today the day finally came. Our pickup spot is only about a block out of my way on my route home from work, so by 5:15 I was loading a box into my car.

This is what we got: asparagus, rhubarb, radishes, lettuce, mixed greens, spinach, spring onions, mint. Photo of my half-share below.



It's a lot of greens, but I'm determined to do more than eat salad for the next week. Paige's boyfriend apparently is a big radish fan, so I gave them my radishes along with their half-share. I'm excited to cook the rhubarb-- my grandmother used to make us a great strawberry rhubarb upside-down cake but I've never done anything with rhubarb myself. The greens look they'll last a shorter time than the rhubarb and asparagus, so I'll use those soon.