CSA 2013 Partial Share #3

Good thing I like green things, because the first few weeks of the CSA season is pretty much solid green, every week. Salads and omelettes have become a way of life and even my eggs are green (from all the extra vegetables I keep throwing into the pan). Nom nom nom.

CSA 2013 Partial Share #3
- 1 bunch spring onions
- 1 head red leaf lettuce
- 1 bunch garlic scapes
- 1 bunch Swiss chard
- 4 oz salad mix (which I really really need to remember to wash tonight)

Winner: GARLIC SCAPES. <3 <3 <3 I adore garlic scapes. They're so cute and so tasty!
Challenge: Lettuce, especially after last week. I still have half a head of red leaf in the fridge (if it hasn't gone bad by now). Le sigh.

I was supposed to get a chicken, but I came at the very last minute and they were out by the time I got there. So I'll probably get one next week or a double chicken share the week after. I am running out of space in my freezer though, so I'm going to try and cook the first chicken with my friend during July 4th weekend.

radis avec beurre et sel

Who knew? Radishes eaten the French way are surprisingly delicious. Slice them thin, top with butter and a sprinkle of coarse sea salt. Eat.

That's it!

I'm not even a huge fan of butter (I know, but hey, at least I like bacon and chocolate...?) or raw radishes (too peppery in large quantities). But the butter goes a long way in moderating the pepperiness of the radish, while the salt brings out and balances the flavors of both. I've heard this combination makes a great sandwich as well, but I didn't have any bread, so I'll have to try that next time.

frisee, bacon, and a poached egg

Fact: bacon makes most things ten times better. Undaunted by all the green heads lolling around in my fridge, I set out to find a tasty way to split an entire head of frisee with my bestie. Just like I tossed in some sausage to balance out the escarole*, I decided to use some bacon to provide some richness and satisfying depth of flavor to the frisee. It was...really, really good. Thanks, bacon! Maybe a little salty, but not noticeably so. We paired the frisee with another garden salad (that head of red leaf lettuce just keeps on giving) and a bottle of Moscato that the bestie picked out. The sweet bubbly was a perfect complement to the bacon and eggs. Now that I think about it, I guess what we really had last night was a dinner version of brunch.


* While looking for the frisee, I pulled out one of the plastic bags in the fridge and peeped inside. Imagine my consternation when I looked into one and saw coarse green leaves with thick white stems that looked suspiciously like escarole... I think we cooked the green leaf lettuce with our pasta last night. Oops.
On the bright side, if I'm correct and if the green leaves in my fridge are in fact escarole and not lettuce, then this means I've found a tasteful, tasty way to cook lettuce! Which would be kind of awesome.

As a side note, I'm making good progress with the share! Remaining items: 1/2 head red leaf lettuce, 1 head of either escarole or green leaf lettuce (TBD), two spring onions, and radishes from share #1.

Wilted frisee with bacon and a poached egg (serves 2)
Ingredients:
- 1 head frisee
- 2 spring onions
- Minced garlic
- 5 strips bacon
- Cooking oil
- Salt, pepper
- 2 eggs

Directions:
1. Wash frisee and green onions thoroughly.
2. Heat a large pan over medium high heat. Throw in the bacon strips and let them cook for a bit.
3. Chop frisee into bite size pieces (they will shrink as they cook down though, so make your pieces a little bigger than you want them to be at the end). Chop green onions and set aside.
4. By now the bacon should be done. Remove from heat and extract the bacon from the pan. Wipe down the pan with a paper towel to remove most of the bacon grease.
5. Heat water in a small pan (add as much water as possible without risking a spill).
6. Add some cooking oil to the large pan and reheat. Once the oil is hot, add chopped green onions and garlic plus a dash of salt. Stir and cook until the garlic begins to turn golden brown.
7. Add the frisee to the large pan in big handfuls. Season with a bit of salt and pepper, and cook until wilted about 5 minutes.
8. While the frisee is cooking, check the water in the small pan. When it's boiling, turn the heat down to low. Crack an egg into a small dish and slide it into the water. Repeat and slide another egg into the pan. Poach to desired level of "doneness." (I personally think leaving the yolk all nice and runny makes a wonderful "dressing" for the frisee).
9. Once the frisee is wilted, remove the large pan from heat and set aside. Take the bacon strips and chop into small pieces.
10. Arrange the frisee into a little nest on your plate, gently place a poached egg in the middle, and top the whole dish with half of the bacon bits. Serve and enjoy the goodness that is bacon.

summer pasta, wine, and best friend

The bestie is in town and this means eating home cooked meals on the reg with company! Since the theme of this week seems to have been death by lettuce, we dutifully built a mini salad of red leaf lettuce, tomato, and cucumber to accompany dinner. Fairly boring, still tasty. More interesting was the main dish: pasta with escarole and sausage.

I had some leftover sausage in the freezer and the logic was that sausage in all its meaty heartiness (lol) would be our saving grace, balancing the escarole and keep us from feeling like reincarnated rabbits. I deliberately kept everything light and simple though, because it’s summer and it’s hot. A chilled bottle of pinot grigio was a perfect complement to dinner and I wondered what it would be like if me and the bestie lived just a little closer. Wistful thoughts :/

Pasta with Escarole and Sausage

Ingredients:

-          1 head escarole

-          2 sausage links

-          Minced garlic

-          ½ white onion

-          1 box spaghetti or pasta of choice

-          Red pepper flakes

-          Salt, pepper

-          Olive oil

Directions:

1.       Wash the escarole thoroughly and tear into bite size pieces.

2.       Chop onion and set aside.

3.       Chop sausage into bite size chunks.

4.       Cook pasta for ~10 minutes or until al dente.

5.       While pasta is cooking, heat some olive oil in a (very) large pan. Add onion and garlic, stirring frequently to keep from burning and seasoning lightly with salt. When the onion just starts to turn translucent, add sausage chunks. Cook until sausage is lightly browned.

6.       Add escarole, one big handful at a time (to keep pan from overflowing). Season with red pepper flakes and salt. When escarole is cooked through (3-5 minutes), remove from heat and set aside.

7.       Drain cooked pasta, reserving one cup of pasta water.

8.       Add pasta to the pan. Drizzle with olive oil and heat everything together over medium heat. Season with salt and pepper to taste. Add reserved pasta water as necessary.

9.       Serve and enjoy!

CSA 2013 Partial Share #2

#deathbylettuce comes early this year. We've been getting heavy, unrelenting rainstorms that have turned the city into a giant concrete lined swimming pool. I suppose it comes as no surprise that the farm has been turned into a muddy mess, with happy heads of lettuce thriving in the relatively cool and damp weather.

I am looking forward to seeing what the fields bring us as they dry out. Also, farm trip at the end of the month!

CSA 2013 Partial Share 2
- 1 head red leaf lettuce
- 1 head green leaf lettuce
- 1 head escarole
- 1 head frisee
- 1 bunch spring onions

Winner: Frisee, because I love wilting it ever so slightly and topping it with a fried or poached egg. And I have 2/3 of a carton of cute, brown, free-range eggs in the fridge. I find small colored eggs prettier than the standard jumbo white ones that dominate the supermarket.
Challenge: the pair of lettuce heads. Our newsletter did point out that greens go well in sandwiches, which is true, but only to a point. Lettuce sandwich anyone? You know what would be great with all this lettuce though? Samgyupsal. But there's a BBQ/pool party this weekend and samgyupsal, even disguised in a lettuce leaf bathrobe, is still the temporary enemy. T_T salad it is. Good thing I still have radishes left in the fridge...

Also, I ate a few borage sprouts today and although the flavor is still cucumbery, they've also taken on a distinctly oysterish taste. Kind of threw me off a bit. I'd never really made the connection between cucumbers and oysters up until now, but now I don't understand how I could have missed it. Weird.

garlic, the smelliest savior, and lazy radish tops

I've been hacking and coughing and generally trying to expel one or both of my lungs out of my chest for the last few weeks, and it's starting to drive me slowly insane. Also, my coworkers are about to quarantine me permanently. Apparently between the pneumonia, common cold, and strep throat going around my office, I caught all three. I kid (I hope).

Anyways, it's been a week since the last share, and I used up pretty much everything except the radishes and radish tops. While radishes keep for a while, the radish tops had faded a bit. If I didn't take care of them soon, I knew they'd be destined for the trash heap.

So even though I got home kind of late, I grabbed the tops out of the fridge, picked out all the older, yellowing, mushy stems and leaves, and washed them about twenty times. I hate dirt in my food more than anything else (hi clams, I'm looking at you), and these babies had some nice sandy buildup in the base of the stems. I was feeling lazy after all that washing, so I went the Korean muchim route and made some banchan to eat with lunch (quick "recipe" below).

As I was peeling garlic cloves, I kept coughing, and a thought niggled the back of my mind as I flitted around the kitchen. I eyed the garlic cloves cautiously, hopped onto google, and confirmed my suspicions. Raw garlic, like honey, lemons, ginger, oranges, and eucalyptus, is supposed to help cure colds and coughs.

I realize raw garlic smells. I realize eating raw garlic makes you smell. I also realized that my coworkers at this point, would probably prefer garlic BO over the walking cloud of germs that I've become. So I popped a garlic clove in my mouth, crunched around for a while (omg I didn't realize raw garlic was so spicy and strong and ugh), and when I couldn't take it anymore, I swallowed it down and chased it with honey. Maybe it's a placebo effect, but I immediately felt better and my coughing subsided a bit.

I went to bed with garlic breath (I brushed my teeth extra long, but to no avail). I woke up with garlic breath. I'm still coughing, but I actually feel much better today than I did last night, so I'm thinking perhaps there's something to this home remedy after all! As an added bonus, I saw a mosquito flying around my room this morning and while I didn't manage to kill it, I don't think I have any bites, which is unusual. Viruses, mosquitos, vampires, begone! lol.

Radish Top Muchim
Ingredients
- Radish tops, thoroughly washed
- Several cloves of garlic, thinly sliced or minced
- Red pepper flakes (gochukaru)
- Soy sauce
- Sesame oil*

1. Bring a pot of water to a rolling boil.
2. Drop in the radish greens and cook briefly (less than a minute).
3. Drain and rinse the radish greens under cold water.
4. Squeeze out the excess water from the greens and chop into bite size pieces. Set aside.
5. In a pan, heat some sesame oil.
6. Add garlic and red pepper flakes.
7. Once the garlic begins to turn golden, add the radish tops and stir.
8. Add a little soy sauce to taste.
9. Remove from heat and enjoy!

omg cilantro i have found a use for you

I have never, ever been able to use an entire bunch of cilantro in one go. But thanks to my wonderful, amazing Lebanese summer roommate, I think I have a solution!

First of all, she's awesome because she's really sweet and I got lucky because sometimes Craigslist people are weird. Second of all, she's awesome because she feeds me. But third of all, she's awesome because while she was feeding me, she showed me an incredibly easy way to use cilantro.

Lebanese Potatoes (and Steak)
Ingredients:
- 1 lb waxy potatoes
- 1 bunch cilantro
- 1 spring onion stalk or a quarter of an onion
- Minced garlic
- Cubed steak (optional)
- Olive oil
- Salt and pepper

Recipe:
1. Thoroughly wash potatoes, cilantro, and onions. Defrost meat. Preheat oven to 400 degrees.
2. Chop potatoes into cubes (about 1 cubic inch, maybe a little smaller)
3. Toss potatoes with a drizzle of olive oil, minced garlic, salt, and pepper to taste.
4. Roast potatoes for about 45 minutes to 1 hour or until a fork can be inserted easily.
5. While roasting the potatoes, cook the steak as desired. We cooked the steak in a pan with some garlic and salt. Set aside.
6. Finely chop the cilantro and onions.
7. Heat a spoon or two of olive oil in a small pan.
8. Cook the cilantro and onions over medium heat, stirring frequently to ensure they don't burn.
9. When the cilantro and onions are well cooked, remove from heat and set aside.
10. Remove the potatoes from the oven when done, add the steak and drizzle the cilantro-onion mixture over the top. Mix well and slide back into the oven.
11. Broil for about 3-5 minutes.
12. Remove, serve, enjoy!

The sharp taste of the cilantro is muted but it provides a nice richness to the dish that I wouldn't have suspected cilantro to be capable of. Plus, cooking down the cilantro reduces the volume significantly, making it easy to use up a lot of it at once. I approve!