Mmm, Spicy Corn Chowder + Homemade Bread

I'm really into these frozen vegetables we're getting from the CSA. We got corn and potatoes this week so I made smoky corn chowder. Here's what I did.

Diced a bunch of pancetta and crisped it up in a pan. I took it out with a slotted spoon, then cooked onion and diced frozen green bell pepper. I added some chopped serranos I roasted and froze last summer, along with minced garlic and chipotle chili powder, then diced potatoes. I sprinkled the whole mess with flour then added skim milk. I let that simmer until the potatoes were tender, then added the frozen corn along with sliced scallions, lemon juice and chopped parsley. I made a salad of green leaf lettuce, cucumber and avocado dressed with blue cheese vinaigrette and served it with my favorite non-sweet quickbread, honey oat quick bread. It's so good, I made it all the time because I almost always have the stuff to make it on hand!

It's been a long time since we've had stir-fry night

First, today's pickup:
3 lbs White Potatoes
2 lbs Celeriac
2 lbs Yellow Storage Onions
Frozen Hot Peppers
Frozen Sweet Corn
1 Quart Sauerkraut
Bag of Shoots/Mesclun Mix
Bunch of Mizuna
5 lbs Aurora Farms Vermont Organic White Flour
1 lb Honey Gardens Apiaries Raw Apitherapy Honey
Ploughgate Willoughby Cheese
Champlain Orchards Red Delicious Apples

Whew, so we're making our way through the cabbage! Thankfully we didn't get any more this week! (Though we did get sauerkraut, but we'll just ignore that....)

So tonight's stir-fry was delicious. I sauteed yellow onion, kohlrabi, cabbage, red bell pepper, cherry tomatoes from the freezer and garlic, then made a sauce of red miso, lemon juice and honey. I added the tofu from last week. I thickened it with a little bit of cornstarch. We put it over rice. I went a little overboard with the lemon (mom, are you reading?) but I tempered it with a bit of soy sauce. Good stuff.

Pork Roast + leftovers

This weekend we had friends up from Massachussetts. I decided it was time to move on to phase 2 of Eat the Pig: time to break out the pork loin. We had a beautiful pork loin roast based on one of my favorite EatingWell recipes, tuscan pork loin. I forgot to get rosemary at the store, so I used dried instead, along with some dried basil. I skipped making the pan sauce at the end. To accompany it, I roasted a boatload of veggies from our CSA, including kohlrabi, turnips, beets, potatoes, carrots, parsnips and onions. I brought home some stewed rhubarb that was leftover from a photo shoot along with some strawberries and whipped up a basic crumble topping for dessert. With ice cream of course.

So then tonight, we had enchiladas. I pulled the rest of the pork off the roast and mixed it with some of the frozen dlgs we've been getting from our CSA and some home-cooked pintos that were hanging out in the freezer. The red enchi sauce came from a can (gasp!) but oh well. I made a slaw with cabbage, daikon and red bell pepper, and I made a small batch of guac. I heart enchi night.

Dinner Tonight: Pretty Salad, Roasted Roots & Salmon Burgers

I'm pretty darn excited about tonight's salad. To deal with the ridic amt of cabbage in my fridge, I thinly sliced 1/2 a head of red cabbage and added it to a handful of the shoot mix along with a shredded daikon and some dried cherries. That's going to be dressed with my tahini dressing.

I have roots roasting: yellow onion, parsnips, carrots and adirondack potatoes with some evoo and dried thyme.

Served with salmon burgers from Costco. For brain power. I know some folks dislike Costco greatly, but everyone I talk to there says it's a great place to work. I can get some sustainably caught fish there, along with some organic stuff. I pick and choose what I buy there, but their wild Alaskan salmon burgers are pretty nice to have in the freezer :)

Pizza Night + Last Night's Pickup

Last night's pickup:
2 lbs Adirondack Potatoes
2 lbs Red Onions
1.5 lb Daikon Radish
2 lbs Orange Carrots
2 lbs Green Savoy Cabbage
Frozen Shredded Zucchini
Frozen Braising Greens
Bag of Shoots/Mesclun Mix
Red Hen Turkey Red Pain Au Levain
Jasper Hill Landaff Cheese
Pa Pa Doodles Farm Eggs
Vermont Soy Maple Ginger Baked Tofu

I'm not gonna lie, I'm getting a tad overwhelmed with cabbage. We still have lots in our fridge and got more. Who's got ideas for cabbage for me?!?

Last night's dinner was delish. I had stashed our pizza dough from last week in the freezer for a rainy day. Yesterday was not rainy at all, but it was nice to have an easy dinner at our fingertips. I had a little leftover marinara. I defrosted our DLGs from the CSA and chopped them up (I had added them to the Mexi-soup last week without chopping them and they were mighty stringy--still had the tiny stems on and all that jazz). Then I thinly sliced a red onion, sliced the last roasted red pepper in the fridge and chopped some kalamata olives. Still had the fresh mozz from last week too.

Also made a salad with shoots, shredded carrot and daikon, dried MI cherries and that ginger-miso-tahini dressing. I'm totally digging on the combo of the cherries with that dressing right now. We'll have more tonight.

Fried Chickpeas with Andouille & Kale

Tonight I'm making a riff on Mark Bittman's fried chickpeas with chorizo and spinach.

Into the pan with the oil and chickpeas went some dried thyme and garlic powder. I'm subbing green kale for spinach and andouille for chorizo. I'm adding a chopped yellow onion, skipping the breadcrumbs and serving the whole mess over red quinoa.

It was delicious. I'd make it again in heartbeat!

Lettuce Wraps

Tonight was lettuce-wrap night. I loosely based this evening's dinner on a recipe I developed a couple of years ago for EatingWell. We were in Montpelier all weekend and I hadn't made any real plan for dinner when we got home. We had ground beef from our meat CSA in the freezer, so I popped it in a pan and let it cook as it defrosted. I minced a can of water chestnuts and added some Chinese five-spice powder, ground ginger, hoisin sauce, chile-garlic sauce, water, soy sauce and a minced onion. I grated carrots and the rest of our daikon from our CSA and snipped some mint from our pot upstairs. I brought home a head of butterhead lettuce from work, and I even ate some wrapped in green cabbage leaves. I love this meal--so light and delicious.

Clean-Out-the-Fridge-Soup

Dan likes to poke fun at me, but I take pride in not throwing a whole lot of stuff out. I can pretty much always find a use for leftovers. I save veggie scraps for stock, turn leftovers into something new, make chicken stock after I roast a chicken.

I thought dinner Friday night was going to be leftover chicken cobbler, but Dan had it for lunch. We were pressed for time, as we wanted to get to Montpelier to start a weekend in our old town. I didn't want to stop anywhere because we had 2 dogs with us that might kill each other if left alone in the car. But I also didn't want to take a lot of time to make anything.

I saw some cooked rice in the fridge and thought I'd start there. I dumped two partially empty boxes of broth in a pan -- one chicken, one beef -- then added a ton of salsa and the rice. I had like 1/2 cup of black beans, that went in too. I had brought home a few raw chicken tenders for Kayla but decided they'd be better in our soup. I also tossed in a handful or 2 of frozen DLGs from our CSA. I let that cook, then ladled it into bowls and topped them with crushed tortilla chips and shredded Cheddar.

Dan declared the "refrigerator schmegma" as one of the top 5 soups I ever made, "which is saying a lot," Dan said, "because you make a lot of soup--and a lot of good soup."

Good husband.

Chicken Cobbler

I've been jonesing for Chicken Pot Pie. Every time I brought it up, Dan wrinkled his nose. So when I saw Mark Bittman's recipe for Chicken & Vegetable Cobbler I thought maybe he'd like that.

First, let me start off my saying I made many tweaks. Swapped a smallish yellow onion for the leek. We got oyster and shiitakes in our CSA this week, so I used those instead of the button mushrooms. Along with the sliced carrots, I added a few diced parsnips. (Shh, don't tell Dan.) Dan had roasted a chicken earlier in the week, so I pulled the rest of the meat off the bird instead of using thigh meat. I also used white ww flour and regular milk in the topping.

I'd say we were both slightly disappointed. The flavor was decent, but next time I'd make it with white flour and make more gravy.

The star of the meal was the salad: the base was our shoots. Then I added some bean sprouts still had hanging around from pho night. Next came some grated daikon. Then a smattering of dried cherries my mom gets me from Traverse City, MI (the best cherries ever!). I made a ginger-miso-tahini dressing made with miso from our CSA and real gosh-darned tahini from a Middle Eastern market in Detroit. I thought I might've stepped over the edge on weird combinations, but it was awesome. Dan even declared it one of the top 3 salads he had ever eaten. Knowing how many salads he's eaten just in the time we've been together, I'll take that as a compliment.

Pasta Night!

It was pasta night at Chez Tesini. We got local whole-wheat (or ww blend?) linguine from VT Pasta Co in our share today. I made a delectable sauce based on tuna pomodoro. I sauteed a couple of small diced onions in olive oil, then added 2 large sliced garlic cloves, a hefty pinch of crushed red pepper and a bit of dried rosemary and thyme. Then I added some diced tomatoes I froze last summer, plus a couple of handfuls of frozen cherry tomatoes from this week's pickup and the juice of 1 lemon. Oh and I added 2 tomato paste "ice cubes." After that thickened, I added a bunch of sliced kalamata olives, 2 cans of drained chunk light tuna and the zest of the lemon. Served that with plenty of grated Parm over the linguine.

three thumbs up!

Dan's Best Dinner Ever + This Week's Pickup

Go Dan Go! I had an appointment last night and knew I wouldn't get home until at least 6:30 but really wanted to roast the chicken I had defrosted from last week's meat share. So I sent Dan the recipe for Whole Roasted Lemon-Herb Chicken on a Bed of Vegetables from the latest issue of the magazine and asked Dan to start it. We didn't have the exact ingredients to make it, but Dan would rather improvise anyway. He chopped up the remaining red norland potatoes, a celeriac and a beet or 2 for the vegetable portion. I made a salad with most of the remaining shoots, clementines and olives. It was perhaps the best dinner Dan's ever made.

This week's pickup includes:
2 lbs Parsnips
2 lbs Purple Top Turnips
1 lb Valentine Radish
1 Bulb Garlic
2 lbs Yellow Storage Onions
Frozen Tomatoes
Bag of Shoots/Claytonia Mix
Elmore Mountain Flax Bread
VT Pasta Linguine
5 lbs Organic Rolled Oats

I'm laughing a little about the oats because I got 20# of oats last year from Quebec and we're still not even half-way through. Guess I'll be making some granola and then some this weekend! I'm looking forward to the pasta--that's a new thing from my experience last year! We're also getting mushrooms today--were supposed to get them last week but they didn't have enough I guess.

Leftovers Done Right

Finally got around to making something with the leftover smoked pork chops and cabbage. I diced 2 celery stalks, 2 carrots, 1 kohlrabi and 3 or 4 red norland potatoes, simmered it in beef broth with some dried thyme, then added the diced leftover smoked pork chops and the cabbage mixture. Dan said it was surpisingly good :D

Dinner Tonight: Smoked Pork Chops & Cabbage-Apple "Kraut"

MMMMM! I love smoked pork chops! They were from the pig we went in on from the farm we bring our compost to. Delicious! For dinner, I sauteed some sliced red onion in olive oil, then added 1/2 a medium head of thinly sliced red cabbage and a slice Macintosh apple. I poured in some apple cider and cider vinegar as well as a big dollop of whole-grain mustard. I let that cook a bit then put in the smoked pork chops, covering them with the "kraut." When they were hot, they were done!

Dan gave it 7.8/10 stars. He doesn't like bone-in meat.

3.3.10 Pickup

This week's pickup...
1.5 lbs Red Thumb Fingerling Potatoes
2 lbs Red Beets
1 lb Celeriac
2 lbs Kohlrabi
3 lbs Green Cabbage
Frozen Braising Greens Mix
Bag of Shoots/Claytonia Mix
On the Rise Pizza Dough
Amir Hebib's Oyster and Shiitake Mushrooms
Maplebrook Fresh Mozzarella
Pete's Applesauce

It's also our first meat pickup! I'm so excited. We're getting...
a chicken
lamb loin chops
hot italian YAK sausage
ground beef

I still have carrots, some shoots, a daikon and a head of cabbage in my fridge, plus peppers in my freezer. I decided this week that I'll make a menu on Tues pm/Wed am to help use stuff in a timely manner.

Using what we have on hand and in this week's share I came up with....
smoked pork chops with quick homemade kraut and roasted potatoes

pizza with mozz, yak sausage, greens and salad

roast chicken and vegetables/potatoes

salmon with celeriac-carrot salad

chicken tacos with cabbage slaw

Dumpling Soup

This is in no way local but I have to write this down for posterity's sake.

Dan has a little sinus infection going on and wanted something spicy and brothy for dinner. This is what I made.

I was already poaching chicken, so I used the leftover poaching liquid and added more chicken broth to it, along with minced ginger, chile-garlic sauce, soy sauce and 5 spice powder. I first added sliced celery, diced carrot and diced onion. After a bit I added diced purple snow peas and shredded cabbage. Then I added Ling Ling dumplings! After the dumplings were done, I stirred in whole cilantro leaves and topped our bowls with sliced radishes.

SO GOOD!