This week's haul

This week is similar to last week's box o' veggies:

- 2 heads of lettuce
- 1 zucchini
- 1 tomato
- garlic scapes
- green onions
- strawberries (this will be their last week...so sad!)
- green beans
- more mint/bergamot tea leaves
- 1 cucumber
- a bunch of spinach

Any suggestions out there for how to use the garlic scapes? They seem a bit like green onions to me; I was thinking I could put them in a stir-fry, or actually remember to saute them with the zucchini, like I meant to last week...

Venison, zucchini, & potatoes

The centerpiece of last night's dinner was a delicious piece of farm-raised venison purchased at the Brickworks on Saturday. And who knew when I purchased the meat I was being trendy? (Probably some of you food-lovers out there, but not me.) Check out this article in the National Post on farm-raised venison in Ontario. The recipes at the end of the article sound delicious - but we went a simpler route.

When it's raw, venison looks a bit more like an organ meat than typical beef steaks, I believe because it has less fat running through it. This, of course, is good news for the nutrition-conscious: it's lower in fat than beef (and has other benefits, too, I'm sure). It was also an interesting purple-red color - again a departure from beef, and more akin to the color of beef liver.

Undeterred, I did as the venison farmer suggested and got out my grill pan, heated it on medium-high, and sprinkled it with fresh-ground pepper and kosher salt. A couple minutes on each side produced a lovely, rare piece of meat with flavorful searing where the grill ridges hit the steak. Yes, it is possible to grill meat indoors.

On the side: sauteed zucchini from the CSA share, and a boiled red and Yukon gold potato with butter and dill from our balcony garden. I had meant to use the garlic scapes with the zucchini, but just plain forgot; the couple I have will be used this week with any additional ones we accumulate.

All in all, this was a successful week of using up the produce. There are soup and calzones in the freezer, and everything else (other than the scapes, some green beans, and cabbage - all still usable) were eaten. I'm feeling very full of vegetables!

Evergreen Brick Works Farmer's Market

Yesterday, my friend Craig and I went to the Evergreen Brick Works Farmer's Market. His description of the excusion is here, on his blog, The Fairsley Difference. For those interested in local farmer's markets in and around Toronto, you should definitely check his blog out!

Very short version of the experience: definitely go. Craig talks about a lot of the stuff we bought - today, P and I ate some of the Old Traditional Organic Cheddar from Mill Bank Cheese I bought at the market in grilled cheese sandwiches. The melty cheese on the sourdough from the market, and tomato from the CSA share...best grilled cheese I've had in a long time. No photo - we ate it too quickly to get out the camera!

Tomorrow night's dinner: venison from Deer Valley Farm, and the rest of the week's veggies. The lettuce from this week was used at dinner at Craig's house last night - it was just too much for me to take on by myself!

Tofu & green onion stir fry

This week has been a busy one - but I've still managed to use most of the veggies so far. The strawberries were eaten for dessert and on breakfast cereal; the peas were used in a soup, suggested by Kimberley, who left the recipe in the comments of this post.

Last night, our friend Z came over for dinner so I could have help eating some of the remaining vegetables. On the menu: stir-fried tofu with spring onions, and stir-fried bok choy. Believe it or not, the bok choy from last week was still good - fresh in its Ziplock in the crisper. The fact that they were still fresh gives you an idea of how old the vegetables are at the grocery store when they go limp and sad only a few days after bringing them home.

The stir-fried tofu and spring onion recipe came from Mark Bittman's How to Cook Everything, and the bok choy recipe was previously posted here. Both were tasty; I had no idea how sweet stir-fried green onions could be. Would I make them again? Obviously the bok choy is one to be repeated, since I've already made it twice. The tofu stir-fry? Maybe - but only if I'm eating without P. In this recipe, the flavor of the tofu isn't supplanted by anything; there's only a smattering of soy sauce to overpower the soy flavor. I don't mind it, but it definitely wouldn't be up P's alley.

What's next? I'm not sure - it depends on what I find at the Evergreen Brick Works Farmer's Market tomorrow!

Spinach and Salami Calzones

When P is away, I find it easier to try making something that could go very wrong. Even though he's happy to eat Kraft Dinner in a pinch, I like knowing it would be only me eating breakfast cereal if dinner fails. So rather than our normal pizza, I decided to make calzones.

This one was definitely not a failure: they're delicious! The dough is thinner than I normally roll it out in order to create four calzones, and the dough gets crispy all around. My favorite part of the pizza is also the crust - and the calzone puts the flavor of the crust on display. And it used all of the spinach from last week (still fresh enough to cook and eat), and this week.

Happily, the four calzones gave me one for dinner, one for lunch tomorrow, and two to freeze, so P will get to eat one!

Spinach and Salami Calzones

3 - 4 cups spinach
1 clove of garlic, chopped fine or put through garlic press
3 tbsp olive oil
1/2 recipe pizza dough
1/4 cup pizza sauce
1/4 cup chopped salami
1 cup mozzarella cheese
cornmeal for sprinkling

Preheat oven to 500 degrees F.

Heat 1 tbsp oil in non-stick pan over medium-high heat. When oil is hot, add garlic; cook until fragrant. Add spinach and cook until wilted. Take off heat to cool slightly.

Separate dough into 4 pieces. Roll each into a rough circle about 6 inches wide. Spread pizza sauce on half of each circle leaving a 1/2 inch border. Then add the salami, spinach, and cheese. Fold the edges of the dough over to cover the filling, twisting the edges of the dough so that the ends of the dough are tucked in and the filling will not leak out.

Place calzones on pan strewn with cornmeal. Brush tops of calzones with remaining 2 tbsp olive oil. Cut steam vent in top of each. Bake for 10 minutes, until tops are brown.

Cool slightly before eating; the insides are hot! This calzone recipe would be delicious with any of your favorite pizza toppings. The thought crossed my mind to try using the beet greens, tomato, and zucchini from this week...is it wrong to make calzones twice in one week?

This week's haul

There was lots in this week's box - and while I unpacked it, I still haven't washed everything yet...too much to do today so far.

Here's what I have to work with:
- a giant head of lettuce
- another purple kohlrabi
- 2 more small beets
- green beans
- peas
- strawberries
- green onions
- spinach
- 1 zucchini
- 1/2 of a green cabbage
- 1 tomato
- some mint and bergamot tea leaves (an extra added on at the last minute - the farmers had extra)

I'm going to bet that this week is going to be busy, and that I won't have much inclination to cook, since P isn't around - so I'm going to head off the inevitable waste (and use up some of what's left in my fridge) tonight. Here's the plan:

Roasted root vegetables

Roast beets, wrapped in tin foil, in a 400 degree F oven. In the same oven, roast 1 inch pieces of kohlrabi and carrots, sprinkled with olive oil, kosher salt and pepper.

Once the beets are roasted and cool, peeling off the skin is easy. Cut into pieces roughly the same size as the kohlrabi and carrots. Put in refrigerator for use later in the week, but store separate from the other vegetables so they don't stain them.

And what will I do with the pre-roasted veggies?
- add to a green salad, along with feta or goat cheese, some toasted nuts, and some dried cranberries, maybe a hard-boiled egg, and any other vegetables that seem tasty
- cut into smaller pieces and fry for a side with eggs and bacon (breakfast for dinner - my favorite!)

Any other suggestions for using this type of pre-cooked vegetable are welcome. I'm guessing with the quantities I have, this will use it up. The heat this week in Toronto is definitely begging for salads and foods served cold (though I've been dreaming of experimenting with a spinach calzone...) I'm also thinking of ways to use the beet and kohlrabi greens that is appropriate for the weather. My greatest food challenge this week: using the green onions I've amassed. Any suggestions?

Rhubarb, strawberry, & apple pie follow-up

We're back from Ottawa - and here's a photo of the last two pieces of pie before they were eaten. The pie was fantastic - amazing for dessert, even better for breakfast the next day. Although I seem to rarely bake the same thing twice - there are so many great recipes to try - this one will be made again if strawberries and rhubarb show up together again in the weekly box.

One challenge this week: P is away from Tuesday until Saturday. That leaves me to eat all of the veggies, and we still have some left from last week because we were away. I may turn into a head of lettuce...

Rhubarb, strawberry, and apple pie

From the title of this post, you already know that changes had to be made to the original plan of a strawberry-rhubarb marriage - a third pie-appropriate filling needed to be added. Turns out the half-share I have in the CSA didn't give me quite enough fruit for the pie - a little under 2 cups of strawberries, and 3 or so cups of rhubarb, when all was washed and cut up. In the midst of baking the pie, what was I to do?

Rather than scrap the idea entirely (I had managed to make a half-decent looking bottom pie crust, so had beaten my expected nemesis), I considered my options. Obviously, more had to go in the pie, or the proportions of sugar and spices would be off, and the volume of the pie would be sad-looking. This left me with two options in the refrigerator: blueberries (yes, I realize they're far from local this time of year, but I couldn't resist them for my morning cereal) or a Granny Smith apple. Blueberries, no matter what their provenance, tasted wrong to me in my head. Apples, on the other hand, seemed to go well with the spices (cinnamon, ginger, and nutmeg), and the texture of the fruits already in the mix.

I began with a base recipe from Anna Olson's cookbook Sugar: Simple Sweets and Decadent Desserts, added the apple, and also took the liberty of substituting arrowroot powder for the cornstarch. This is because Baking Illustrated (the baking cookbook put out by the same people who write Cook's Illustrated magazine and their assorted cookbooks) had mentioned that tasters enjoyed the thickening power of root-based thickeners over cornstarch, but tapioca interacted with the rhubarb to give the pie a gummy texture.

Now, the difficulty is that I cannot sample this pie until tomorrow night. I'm bringing it to our friends' home in Ottawa, and the hard thing about bringing pies anywhere (and cakes, too, for that matter), is that it seems impolite to have already eaten a piece. Until I taste it, the recipe and a picture of the finished product will have to satisfy your curiosity (and mine) about how it tastes.

Rhubarb, strawberry, & apple pie
adapted from Sugar: Simple Sweets and Decadent Desserts

Crust
1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
1/4 tsp salt
1/4 cup unsalted butter, chilled
1/4 cup vegetable shortening
1 Tbsp lemon juice
3 - 5 Tbsp cold water

Fruit filling
3 cups chopped fresh rhubarb
2 cups hulled and sliced strawberries
1 peeled and chopped Granny Smith apple
1 cup sugar
2 Tbsp arrowroot powder
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp ground ginger
dash of salt

Crumble topping
2/3 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 cup sugar
1/4 tsp freshly-ground nutmeg
dash of salt
1/4 cup unsalted butter, melted

For crust, mix flour with salt. Cut in butter and shortening with pastry cutter until mixture is a roughly even crumbly texture. Add lemon juice and water until dough comes together enough to shape into disc. Wrap disc in plastic wrap and chill for 30 minutes.

Preheat oven to 400 degrees C. Roll out dough on lightly floured surface to fit a 9-inch pie pan. Line pie pan with pastry, and trim and crimp edges. Chill while preparing fruit for filling.

For the fruit filling, toss the rhubarb, strawberries, and apple with sugar, arrowroot powder, spice, and salt to coat evenly. Fill pie shell with fruit.

For the crumble topping, mix flour, sugar, nutmeg and salt in small bowl. Mix in melted butter until crumbly (this is easiest with your hands), and spread over fruit. Bake pie on a foil-lined baking tray (to facilitate clean-up) in the 400 degree oven for 20 minutes. Turn the temperature down to 350 degrees for the 40 more minutes, or until the fruit is bubbling.

This week's haul

This week I'm really excited about what's in the box: strawberries! And rhubarb! It's a sign from the farmer gods that I should make something with the two together...perhaps a strawberry rhubarb galette to bring to our friends in Ottawa who we're visiting this weekend. Or maybe just for ourselves...we'll have to see. The abundance of green onions this week leads me to want to make another batch of green onion pancakes...

In the rest of the box:
- string beans
- peas
- green onions
- a purple kohlrabi
- lettuce
- asparagus
- spinach
- beets

There might be a salad in the future for the beets and kohlrabi, and the string beans will be eaten my favorite way: raw. As for the other vegetables, I think I'm learning that I can't really anticipate what, exactly, I'll do with it. We're still working on the spinach, asparagus, and zucchini (and a little bit of bok choy) from last week. The zucchini and bok choy will last another day - we'll see what I do with them tomorrow. With that in mind, here's what was for dinner tonight, with more of the Fred's Bread from last night as toast:

Spinach and asparagus omelet
Serves 2

Unsalted butter for pan
Bunch of spinach
1 clove of garlic, chopped or put through garlic press
5 - 7 stalks of asparagus, cut into 1-inch pieces
3/4 cup sharp cheddar cheese, grated
5 eggs
Salt & pepper to taste

Melt 1/2 pat of butter in a non-stick pan over medium heat. Add garlic; saute for 30 seconds, and add spinach. Cook until wilted; put aside. Add another 1/2 pat of butter to pan. Saute asparagus in same pan until crisp-tender, adding some salt and pepper; put aside. Beat eggs, a generous pinch of salt, and a few grinds of pepper in a bowl; add to pan. Move egg around until mostly cooked; add cheese, spinach, and asparagus. Cover until top is firm. Serve immediately.

You could use olive oil instead of butter, but the butter adds nice flavor to the omelet. Adding the salt twice also layers the flavors a bit - so long as you're not going salt crazy (or using salted butter), it won't be too salty to eat.

Kale, Mennonite Sausage & Potato Soup

As soon as I tasted the Mennonite Sausage that came with the first week's box, I knew I wanted to make soup with it. When kale came in the box the following week, it was kismet: one of my favorite things that my mom would make when I was growing up was a sausage and kale soup. Rather than use a recipe online, which would leave me with odd quantities of things in small containers in the fridge, I simply used all of the kale, leftover sausage, and the entire container of chicken broth (I didn't have enough homemade for this recipe). Here's what I put together:

Kale, Mennonite Sausage & Potato Soup

1 tbsp vegetable oil
3 Mennonite sausages, sliced into rounds
3 large red-skinned potatoes, thinly sliced
1 cup dry white wine
900 mL low sodium chicken stock (about 30 ounces))
1 bunch of kale, with the stalks removed and sliced
Salt & Pepper to taste

Saute sausages in large pot until starting to brown. Add the potatoes, white wine, and broth; bring to a boil. Turn down heat and simmer for about 10 minutes, until the potatoes are mostly cooked through. Add the kale; cook uncovered for another 10 minutes or so until the kale and potatoes are tender. Add salt and pepper to taste. (I added no salt, as the broth had enough in it - but if you're using homemade broth, you might need to add some.)

The soup was simple, and really put the sausage on display: the slightly peppery and smoky flavor of the sausage shone through. The kale was delicious, having soaked up the flavors of the sausage along with its leafy goodness, and the potatoes provided some necessary heft to the soup. We had some great bread with it that P picked up on his way home: an herb and onion batard from Fred's Bread. While the soup was hot, the supper was a nice, light ending to a warm day.

1000 Tastes of Toronto

I know, this post isn't about what I did with my CSA share - but it is about eating in Toronto, so I feel like it fits within the parameters of the blog.

P and I ventured down to Queen's Quay around noon today for the second day of the 1000 Tastes of Toronto part of the Luminato festival. I had looked at the whole Luminato program, but deemed myself too boring to enjoy any of the arts presentations, and (not surprising for anyone who knows me), planned only to go for the food. Cash in hand, we stood in a surprisingly fast-moving line for our tickets ($5 each, with each ticket buying one thing at each booth.) Eight tickets in hand, we checked out the selection.

We first stopped at the booth put on by Prohibition, a gastropub that was offering a verion of poutine with cheese curds, gravy, and duck confit, on top of a rosti. In our excitement of eating the first dish, I did not take a picture - though it wasn't that exciting looking. I can imagine this would taste better in the restaurant; not everything was as warm as it should have been, so it didn't quite take the cold edge off of the cheese curds in the way it should have. I forgive them for this, though, given the difficulty of serving outdoors - I've seen how those guys on Top Chef struggle with tasks like this!


Next stop, Indus Junction, who was serving a chicken curry with cilantro (sorry, Mom) and coconut milk, chickpeas, and basmati rice. The chickpeas probably have a more official name, but it wasn't posted - but I know I've eaten this type of chickpea before because they're spicy. The flavors were all fantastic - the chickpeas were spicy, but not too hot to taste the flavor of the spices and the chickpeas themselve, and the curry was delicious. The chicken was a tad overcooked, but again, I'm forgiving under the circumstances. I will definitely put this restaurant on our list of those to visit.

P then chose to visit the booth hosted by Mariposa Cruises because they were serving a blackened sirloin sandwich. The picture does not do this justice - the meat was moist and very flavorful, and the grain mustard and horseradish on the sandwich was present in just the right amount. Even the bun was squishy but substantive enough to support the meat. If this is what they serve on their tours, we might have to go - we did get a handful of $5 off coupons from their promotional people standing around the booth.


Near the Mariposa Cruises booth, there was a booth with a very long line of people waiting for the food. The booth was selling BBQ beef, chicken, and fried plantains. I couldn't see what the name of the restaurant was - if it was posted, it was to small to see, or behind the crowd. Having no idea what we were in for, we figured that anywhere there was a line, the people probably knew that what they were waiting for was good. While the BBQ beef we ended up with (a cube steak slathered with BBQ sauce) was tasty, we could have lived without the rice. The fried plantains, however, were very good, with the ricotta they added to the plate making a delicious combination. If anyone reading this knows what restaurant this was, please let me know.

Almost near the end, we hit the Dos Amigos booth for chicken empanadas and chicken tamales. This is definitely a restaurant I want to visit for a true sit-down dinner: both were delicious. The chicken empanadas in particular were fabulous: the chicken was moist, the cilantro (again, sorry Mom) really added some flavor to the filling, and the pastry surrounding it was flaky. It was a shame we were ending our eating spree: both of us were too full to finish the tamale.

Too full to think about real food, we stopped for some gelato. Oddly, this gelato was being served on brioche buns - a sort of ice cream sandwich - that completely did not work. The ice cream was too soft, and just squished out of the sides when you bit into it, and the brioche had nothing going for it. We both ended up just licking the gelato out of the buns and tossing them away. The gelato was chocolately and cold, and a perfect ending to our eating expedition. I did take a picture, but it looks kind of like poo on a bun, so I opted not to include it.

We'll definitely go to 1000 Tastes next year, and try to bring more of an appetite, or maybe more people to share the plates with - there were other things we would have wanted to try!

Tired Sunday night dinner

After what was a longer trip shopping for glasses than we expected (P will have new glasses in 10 days!), we dragged ourselves home and thought about dinner. The sesame soba noodle salad that I'd planned to make just sounded like too much thinking for that particular day, and I'd used up all of the cucumber in the salad the night before, so we switched gears.

Here's what we ended up with: a "what's in the fridge?" stir fry, and steamed pork dumplings from the freezer. Yes, I would have preferred to make my own and freeze them, but this was not to be this time. The stir fry was a tasty way to use some of the soba noodles, and would be great with many permutations of vegetables.

"What's in the fridge?" stir fry

1 tbsp vegetable oil
1 1/2 tsp garlic
1 1/2 tsp ginger
1 zucchini
1/2 bunch of bok choy
2 tsp soy sauce, or to taste
2 tsp fish sauce, or to taste
1 bundle of soba noodles, cooked
cooked chicken (we had some leftover from earlier in the week)
green onions, white and green parts

Heat the vegetable oil in a large skillet or wok. When very hot, add the garlic and ginger and keep moving for 30 seconds, until it's fragrant but not burned. Add the zucchini; cook until it starts to soften slightly. Add bok choy; when it begins to wilt, add the soy sauce and fish sauce. Add the cooked soba noodles; stir so flavors are distributed throughout. When everything looks cooked enough, add the cooked chicken and green onions. (If you were to use raw chicken, add this after the ginger and garlic, but before the zucchini, and cook mostly through. The rest of the cooking time will allow it to be fully cooked.)

Rhubarb parfait and dinner with L and G

Last night, P and I had our friends L and G over for dinner, an event inspired by the fact that I had made a rhubarb parfait on Wednesday night, and it was sitting in the freezer, waiting to be eaten. But what is a rhubarb parfait?

According to my newest cookbook, Anna and Michael Olson Cook at Home: Recipes for Everyday and Every Occasion, what they call a rhubarb parfait is essentially a semifreddo - but because they got the recipe from friends in Germany (because Italians don't really use rhubarb), they referred to it as (I'm guessing) the Germans did.

As you can see in the picture, it came out in the shape of the loaf pan it was frozen into. The way it's made, for those of you not familiar with how a semifreddo is put together, is reminiscent of how ice cream is made, using egg yolks and sugar and cream. The difference here is how they are mixed together: the egg yolks are whipped, then hot sugar is beaten into the egg yolks. Whipped cream is then folded into the egg yolks, and then whipped egg whites are folded in. At the end, what is basically a rhubarb compote is gently stirred in. It's then frozen in a loaf pan lined with plastic wrap at least over night. I would give the whole recipe, but it's long and involved, so if you're really interested, check out their recipe in the book.

Given how it's made, it's not surprising that the flavor resembles ice cream, though it's simultaneously heavier and lighter in mouth feel than ice cream. Heavier because there is no milk to offset the fat in the cream; lighter because of the air whipped in in all three stages of assembly. The flavor of rhubarb in this recipe doesn't hit you in the face; it's delicate, and (I hate to say) a bit boring. I'm looking forward to pouring the other rhubarb compote I made over some homemade vanilla ice cream - it's sweet enough to offset the sharpness of the rhubarb flavor so you can taste much more than just a hint of rhubarb in every bite.

The rest of our dinner, though, was far from boring. L and I prepared the food:

- A salad of greens from our CSA share and fennel, with a citrus dressing, not pictured here because it wouldn't fit on the plate in the first round of eating!
- Cucumber from the CSA share, with sour cream, lime, & basil from our balony garden, from In the Kitchen with Anna: New Ways with the Classics
- A quinoa salad, created by L, with tomatoes, feta, pine nuts, mint from the CSA share and basil from the balcony garden, with a balsamic vinaigrette
- Sweet potato oven fries
- Pan-seared salmon

All of it was delicious, and felt very appropriate for the summer that's approaching. I would make every single one of the components of this dinner again - the quinoa salad in particular. In the spirit of Greek cooking, though, rather than giving a recipe, just put in all of those listed components as much as is necessary!

Radishes, rhubarb compote, and this week's haul

Yesterday I picked up our weekly share, and here's what was in the box:
- a bunch of kale
- a head of lettuce, plus a small container of salad greens
- a purple kohlrabi
- two zucchinis
- more rhubarb
- mint
- a large head of bok choy
- a bunch of spinach
- a bunch of radishes
- green onions
- asparagus
- a cucumber

As with last week (though cursing the task until I was done - yesterday was a long day), I washed a spun dry the greens, and packed them into Ziplocs. Here's my rough plan for it all:
- Radish and kohlrabi salad (that's tonight - see the recipe below, courtesy of Eugenie)
- Green risotto (a spinach risotto)
- Sesame noodles, which will use the bok choy, cucumber, and green onions
- lots of salads, some sauteed zucchini, and more roasted asparagus, all as accompaniments to whatever else I put together

You may have noticed that I had not yet used the rhubarb from last week. Happily, it held up well in our crisper, and we got even more this week. So what to do with it? I turned half of it into a compote (recipe below) - the other half will be discussed in an upcoming post.

So what's on for tonight? Roasted chicken, green salad, and Eugenie's Russian Radish & Kohlrabi Salad. After my last use of radishes, my friend Eugenie suggested a raw way to eat the them that's based on a traditional use of radishes in Russia. Faced with a kohlrabi and no real idea of what to do with it, I had originally thought to roast it - but when I was cutting it up, it had similar texture to a radish. Rather than roast it (being so small, it felt like the amount we'd end up with was silly), I grated it up and added it to the radish salad, described below. All I can say is - yum! It's like coleslaw, but with a slightly bitter tone - a cool accompaniment to tonight's roast chicken, and an excellent way to use radishes (and kohlrabi, if I do say so myself.)

Eugenie's Russian Radish & Kohlrabi Salad

1 bunch of radishes
1 purple kohlrabi
2 tbsp sour cream or yogurt
salt and pepper to taste

Grate radishes and kohlrabi. Mix with sour cream or yogurt. Add salt and pepper before serving to taste.

Now for the rhubarb compote. As strawberries really aren't in season here yet, I decided to make half of our rhubarb into a compote that we could easily freeze. This could then be mixed with strawberries - if this is done while warm, the strawberries will melt a little into the mixture, but not turn to mush. Equally delicious is warming this and putting it on vanilla ice cream.

Rhubarb Compote

2 cups chopped rhubarb
1/2 cup sugar (or to taste - if you like yours less sweet, use less)
2 tsp vanilla
2 tbsp water

Add all ingredients to a saucepan. Bring to boil, then turn down and simmer until the desired consistency.

What to do with radishes?

P and I realized as we sat down to dinner tonight that neither of us had ever eaten radishes any other way than raw in a salad. It would be fair to say that neither of us were fond of radishes this way, so when I saw them on the list of vegetables that were coming in the first week's box, I was nonplussed.

I had originally intended to use a recipe from The Silver Spoon, a so-called "bible of authentic Italian cooking", where the radishes would be glazed in a simple butter-sugar sauce. Instead, as last week I bought a new cookbook - Anna and Michael Olson Cook at Home: Recipes for Everyday and Every Occasion - I opted to try an even simpler recipe from them: Warm Buttered Radishes. The recipe (if you can even call it that in its simplicity) is below.

The radishes made a great side dish to our green onion and chipotle hamburgers (made by P and frozen for quick dinners like tonight), and more green salad from our CSA share. The lettuce is still going strong, which is good, since we still have almost a whole head left and more coming tomorrow! I didn't realize that the radish skin would start to lose its color as they cooked - you can see from the photo above that they're looking lighter pink than one might envision a radish to be.

Warm Buttered Radishes
from Anna and Michael Olson Cook at Home: Recipes for Everyday and Every Occasion

1 tbsp unsalted butter
1 bunch fresh radishes, trimmed, washed, and quartered
kosher salt and ground black pepper

Melt butter in a saute pan over medium heat and add radish quarters. Toss radishes in pan to warm, just for 3 minutes. Season lightly and serve.

Spinach pizza

Tonight we had the spinach that came in our haul this week on top of a homemade pizza, along with a nice side salad of lettuce and cucumbers with a simple homemade balsamic vinaigrette.

Salads somehow taste better when they're made with greens that come from close by; I remember just going out to the garden when I lived at hom to pick some lettuce for the evening's salad - the greens just have more flavor. Even though these were delivered last Tuesday, washing and putting them with a moist paper towel in a Ziploc bag kept them as tasty as they were the day they arrived. The cucumber was equally delicious. After having eaten so many where you just have to peel off the skin to get that thick, chemical-tasting layer off, to have one that you just slice and eat is fantastic. It was hard not to just eat the whole thing while waiting for the pizza to finish cooking.

After getting back from doing some serious shopping today, I made the pizza dough. I've been making this recipe for a few years - it's easy, and makes enough for two 12" pizzas. We freeze half of the dough, wrapped in wax paper and in a freezer bag - it keeps well for a month or so, and defrosts beautifully.

Thin-crust pizza dough

1 3/4 cups very warm water
2 tsp active dry yeast
2 tsp slt
3 1/2 cups all-purpose flour, plus more for dusting
2 tbsp olive oil, plus more for oiling the bowl

Stir the yeast into the warm water (I do this in the Pyrex measuring cup I measured the water in). While waiting for the yeast to proof, pulse the flour and salt in a food processor to mix. When the bubbles have formed at the top of the yeast/water mixture, pour into the food processor while the blade is turning constantly. Then add the olive oil. The dough should have formed a coherent ball and pull away from the sides of the food processor bowl. If it feels very sticky, add a bit more flour.

Put some olive oil (about a tablespoon) into the bottom of a large glass bowl. Turn the dough out into the bowl, and roll it in the olive oil to coat. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and let sit until double its original size.

When fully risen, cut in half and freeze extra half - or use a large cookie sheet pan for a very large pizza. Roll out to fit your pizza pan, and top with whatever your heart desires.



Our heart's desire this week: our favorite pizza sauce, spinach, some hard salami, and mozzarella.

Stir-fried bok choy, green onion pancakes, fried rice

Last night, out of a wish to create a meal that suited the bok choy - not a vegetable we typically buy, but a delicious one nonetheless - I put together an assortment of Chinese dishes. All were definitely worth making again, and (though P might disagree) were better than what we order from Chinese take-out.

Because the green onion pancakes (see Dorie Greenspan's blog for the recipe) require three 30-minute long resting periods, I started on those first. Honestly, the dough smelled a little like homemade Play-Doh, so I was skeptical that it would work out to be anything tasty - but forged ahead anyway. Also, while Dorie blithely instructs you to stir the mixture of flour, salt, oil, and boiling water together and then knead it, she apparently has hands of asbestos, since the mixture is really, really hot (go figure!). As the recipes makes a lot more pancakes than P and I should realistically eat, I'm going to try freezing one of two of the leftovers to see how well they reheat. If that doesn't work, I'll try it with some of the uncooked, but fully-prepared, dough the next time I make the recipe.

The effort was worth it, though - the green onions and the sesame oil gave the pancakes terrific flavor, as did the frying process. Word to the wise: use tongs to flip the pancakes, unless you're really agile with a spatula. I splattered oil all over the stove and onto my hand - though what is a good night of cooking without burning myself a little?

While the pancakes waited for us in a low oven, I made the fried rice, and P made the bok choy.

Stir-Fried Boy Choy
from
The Food of China: A Journey for Food Lovers
recipes by Deh-Ta Hsiung & Nina Simonds

1 bunch bok choy
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
2 garlic cloves, smashed with the flat side of a cleaver
3 thin slices of ginger, smashed with the flat side of a cleaver
3 tablespoons chicken stock
1 teaspoon sugar
light soy sauce, to taste
1 teaspoon toasted sesame oil

Cut the bok choy into 5 - 8 cm (2 - 3 inch) lengths. Trim off any roots that may hold the pieces together, then wash well and dry thoroughly.

Heat a wok over high heat, add the oil and heat until very hot. Stir-fry the garlic and ginger for 30 seconds. Add the bok choy and stir-fry until it begins to wilt, then add the stock and sugar and season with the soy sauce. Simmer, covered, for 2 minutes, or until the stems and leaves are tender but still green. Add the sesame oil and serve hot.
For the fried rice, I used a recipe from Mark Bittman's How to Cook Everything, leaving out the green onions because we'd used them all for the pancakes. Here's my modified version (I also used less oil):

Shrimp Fried Rice
adapted from How To Cook Everything: Simple Recipes for Great Food
by Mark Bittman

1 tablespoon vegetable oil
1 teaspoon minced garlic
1 teaspoon peeled and minced fresh ginger
3 cups leftover rice (I made mine while the dough rested, and then put it in the refrigerator to cool)
1 cup shrimp, peeled and deveined
1/2 cup frozen peas, heated mostly through
2 eggs
2 tablespoons soy sauce

Heat the oil in a wok or skillet to high. Add the garlic and ginger and stir constantly for 1 minute, until they are fragrant, but the garlic has not burned or browned more than a tiny bit.

Turn the heat down a bit, and add the rice. (You may not need to turn the heat down if your "high" on your stove doesn't run super hot.) Break it up so that it's not in big clumps. Stir frequently for 3 - 4 minutes.

Make a hole in the center of the rice and pour the eggs into it. Scramble the eggs, gradually incorporating them in the rice. Add the shrimp and peas. Cook until the shrimp are cooked through. If you can cover the pan, this will help cook the shrimp more quickly.

Add the soy sauce and stir so soy sauce is distributed throughout the rice. Serve immediately.

Mennonite sausages!

Tonight we had the Mennonite sausages, sauteed with onions, and some potato and cheddar perogies - yum! We were too hungry to wait and take a picture of the food, so no photo this time.

The Mennonite sausages were a little bit spicy, and while delicious with the perogies, would probably also be great with eggs, or as part of a soup or stew. We still have four left, so we'll do some experimenting with the rest.

One admission: we were too lazy tonight to make any of the veggies. With the prepping I did the night we brought them home, though, they're holding up well. I washed all of the greens, spun them in the salad spinner, and put them in separate Ziploc bags with a moist paper towel. We had some of the lettuce with our sandwiches this afternoon, and it was still crisp and fresh. Taking the extra time that evening was definitely worth the effort!

Experimenting with layout...

Forgive me while I mess around with different layouts and templates. I'm not feeling adventurous enough yet to go into the html code myself (too much like work...), and I'm trying to balance design while keeping the needs of those with reduced contrast sensitivity in mind (the part of work I just can't shut off). I realize this current template doesn't quite meet the requirements of the latter point, so the look will probably change.

Wednesday dinner

Today's dinner did not go as planned - yes, we ate pork tenderloin, but we did not have the radishes with it. After some thought, I figured they'd last longer than the other, more delicate vegetables, and could therefore wait to be used until later in the week. (We'll see if I'm right in a few days.) So tonight the menu was:

Ginger-garlic pork tenderloin
P's couscous salad
Roasted asparagus

Because today I wasn't feeling all that energetic, both the pork tenderloin and couscous salad are of P's creation - I was his sous chef today, preparing the asparagus for roasting and chopping the vegetables for the salad. The result was a summery mix of textures and tastes that I could easily see eating too much of. This salad is great to bring for next-day lunches, since it's everything in one package, and is fine cold or at room temperature (or even hot, if you're so inclined). The couscous salad recipe is modified from recipes found who-knows-where.

For the couscous:
2 1/3 cups homemade chicken broth
1 1/3 cups whole wheat couscous
2 tsp ground cumin
1 3/4 tsp paprika
1/4 tsp cayenne
For the dressing:
juice and zest of 1/2 large orange (approx. 4 tbsp of juice)
1 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
salt and pepper to taste
Add-ins:
1/3 cup goat cheese, broken into pieces
3 medium-sized tomatoes
3/4 of a large cucumber (approx. the same volume as the tomatoes)
3 large green onions, white and green parts, sliced thinly crosswise
1 19 oz (540 mL) can of chickpeas, rinsed
1 tbsp capers, rinsed
1 tbsp mint, chiffonaded

Boil the chicken broth. Mix couscous and spices in large heat-safe bowl. Whisk together orange juice, zest, oil, salt, and pepper. When chicken broth is boiling, add to bowl with couscous and cover with plastic wrap until it has soaked up all of the liquid. (Follow the directions on the package for proportions of liquid to couscous.) Fluff with a fork. Add cheese first, then vegetables, chickpeas, capers, mint, and dressing; mix. Eat, or let sit in the refrigerator for a while before eating.

The roasted asparagus was simple: drizzle with olive oil, sprinkle with kosher salt and pepper, and roast at 450 degrees F until tender. This was done while the pork was resting - it really only takes a few minutes.

First haul

Here's what was in our first haul from Triple Cord Mennonite Farms, a collection of 22 farms in Elgin County, Ontario:

- spinach
- bok choy
- two bunches of lettuce
- a cucumber
- green onions
- a bunch of radishes
- asparagus
- rhubarb
- several Mennonite sausages

The farmer added the sausages to the box for the week because the weather hasn't cooperated for the last two months, making the first harvest smaller than he would have liked. All of the produce is organic, and I've already washed and put away the greens for the week, lest they go bad before P and I can eat them all.

Here's my plan to use the haul:
- Flaky green onion pancakes (a la Dorie Greenspan, see her recent blog post) and stir-fried bok choy, which we'll have with some shrimp fried rice
- Homemade spinach pizza
- Glazed radishes, which we'll eat with a pork tenderloin and some salad
- Mennonite sausages with perogies and roasted asparagus

I'm not sure what Mennonite sausage tastes like, exactly, so I'll come with a more interesting use for it after we've tried a couple of the links. All of the salad greens and cucumber will get used in a salad. I've yet to make plans for the rhubarb - P definitely wants some strawberry rhubarb pie, but I need to find some good strawberries first.

I'll be posting pictures and reviews of what I make over the next few days, along with recipes (if they turn out to be worth eating again). Any suggestions for using the rhubarb, sans strawberries? A compote is definitely a possibility, but that feels too easy...

First taste of blogging

This blog was conceived as a place to document what we (my husband, P, and I) do with our CSA share over the next few months. For the uninitiated - or those who aren't local food snobs - the CSA share is our community-supported agriculture share. This is essentially our piece of a consortium of Mennonite farms north of Toronto. We purchased this through a fantastic store, Culinarium, that specializes in local food products.

My hope is that this blog keeps me a bit honest about what I do with the CSA shares, and pushes me to keep being creative with our weekly haul. It's kind of like announcing to the world you're on a diet - I'll pretend someone other than me cares if I'm using all of our share in the most interesting and least wasteful way possible.

I invite anyone who reads this blog to post suggestions for recipes, or links to their own blogs about similar topics (local food in Toronto, ways to use an abundance of anything seasonal, etc.)

The first portion of our share arrives tomorrow, as will the first real post!