Week 2

Picked up today:

Arugula
Cherry bell radishes
French bread radishes
Yukina Savoy
Lettuce
Spinach
Komatsuna
Garlic Scapes
Kale
Cilantro

Very excited for the French bell radishes - already had a few for an afternoon snack. Love cilantro!!

And if you are making lots of salads this time of year don't forget my favorite addition - fresh mint! Makes all the vegetables pop and taste very sweet.

Stir-Fried Joi Choi with Mushrooms

Clam chowder and a stuffed quahog is a fabulous Cape Cod dinner at baseball game on a chilly evening but it doesn't quite meet all nutritional requirements. So when I arrived home it seemed like the perfect time to tackle the joi choi. I remember trying it last year and not loving it. So I searched for a recipe with lots of added flavour. I found one for boy choy that had ginger & garlic as well as some soy sauce to finish it off. And I also have some baby bella mushrooms in the fridge to add something else and some substance. I really liked the dish and am now a fan of joi choi! I expect this would work very well with any Asian green so give it a try even if you can't find joi choi.

Stir Fried Joi Choi with Mushrooms
1 T olive oil
1 bulb of young garlic, minced
1 T of minced, fresh ginger
1 c of baby bella mushrooms, cut in half
1 bunch of joi choi, diced into 1 inch pieces
2 T soy sauce (I use low sodium)
salt & pepper

Heat oil in saucepan over medium high heat. Add garlic & ginger and heat for one minute being careful not to let garlic or ginger burn. Add mushroom and cut for 2 minutes. Add joi choi, mushrooms and soy sauce. Cook until greens wilt and stalks are tender. Season with salt & pepper.

Strawberry Rhubarb Crunch

When rhubarb shows up you naturally think of strawberries and this past weekend I had the chance to go strawberry picking. If you have a chance to get out there this time of year and pick your own strawberries DO IT! The simplest thing I can say is they taste like strawberries which I know sounds ridiculous but if you taste them you'll understand. That night I simply hulled a container full of berries to take to the baseball game. No sugar added or necessary and they were a perfectly sweet treat.

Today though I wanted to use the strawberries and rhubarb together. I found a low sugar recipe for a strawberry rhubarb crunch and I adapted it with my own additions. It was bright & sweet and with a little crunch on the top. What a perfect way to highlight both the strawberries and rhubarb and not overly sweet.

Strawberry Rhubarb Crunch

4 cups fresh rhubarb, chopped
2 cups fresh strawberries, hulled and sliced
1 Tablespoon agave nectar
pinch of salt

1 cup rolled oats
1/2 cup packed brown sugar
1/4 cup chopped toasted almonds
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon salt
1/4 butter, cold and cut into small cubes

Preheat oven to 350 degrees

In a baking dish, mixed together rhubarb, strawberries, agave nectar and pinch of salt. In medium bowl, stir together oats, sugar, almonds, cinnamon and salt. Add butter and crumble the mixture with your hands to form a crumbly mixture. Spread mixture over top of fruit.

Bake in oven for 40 minutes until rhubarb is tender. Serve warm.

Tuna over Arugula Salad with Grilled Peaches

Well despite the torrential rain outside it certainly feels like summer at my house. I just had a truly summer meal. I had some ahi tuna so I decided to go right for the arugula and make a salad to serve the tuna over. I try to make my own salad dressings so I hunted for a ginger sesame recipe but I found an Asian Ginger one that looked really good. You can find it here.

For the salad I used the arugula, a few snips of the chives for that mild onion flavour, fennel bulb sliced real thing and one of the radishes thinly sliced. For the tuna I simply rubbed a little olive oil on both sides and seasoned it very well with salt & pepper. I grilled it over high heat for only a few minutes on each side - I like mine pretty rare in the middle so I don't cook it very much. I let it rest for a few minutes and then cut it on the bias and fanned it over the salad. I then drizzled the dressing over the top of both the salad & tuna.

When I was waiting for the tuna to cook I thought that perhaps the salad needed a little something sweet. I have some of the first peaches of the season on my counter so I cut one in half. I dipped it in the salad dressing for just a minute and then put it cut side down on the grill. It didn't cook for very long just to to get some char on it. i then cut it into quarters and put it on the side of the salad.

Such a yummy, fresh dinner! A great way to kick off the summer with a lovely, bright salad.

Year Two - Here We Go Again!

Hello!

Welcome back to the summer of vegetables and my attempt to blog about the delicious finds I will get each week from my Bay End Farm CSA.  Today was the first pick up and I was eager to get there. Because of the mild winter here in the Northeast at one point there was a chance the CSA was going to start a little earlier. And then we had a really dry spring and that chance went away.  Of course today it is pouring cats & dogs and after a couple weeks full of rain that drought seems like a distant memory. My own plantings are flourishing from all this rain and the early warm weather as well.

Back to my haul for the week, this is what the first week's bag contained:

Surrey Arugula
Plum Purple Radishes
Joi Choi
Yukina Savoy
Lettuce
Broccoli Rabe
Rhubarb
Young Garlic
Chives

I'm really excited for the different greens and once again trying to find different ways to prepare them. Of course the young garlic just seems to call out "saute them with me."  I'm also interested in trying to get better at preparing the broccoli rabe.  The hard part will be deciding what to do first.  I will tackle that dilemma in a few hours.  For now it's back to work! 

Beef Stew

I have never been a huge fan of beef stew but usually once a year I get a hankering for it.  Part of the reason is that I like my vegetables to not be mushy which is why I use small vegetables in almost whole pieces. This time I wanted to really develop good flavour so it wasn't just some beef broth with meat and veggies in it.  My inspiration came from the pantry vegetables I still have from the CSA (onions, potatoes, garlic).  I read quite a few recipes and came up with one of my own.  I have to say I was pretty pleased with the results and it was all because the broth was so delicious.  They key was working the stock all day so it was full of layers of flavour and marinating the meat again to build the flavour base.

Beef Stock
20 cups of water
10 beef boullion cubes
6 sprigs of fresh thyme
2 sprigs of fresh rosemary
Bunch of fresh parsley
1 T black peppercorns, crushed
2 T kosher salt
1 t fennel seeds, crushed
1 t ground sage
3 bay leaves
1 whole onion, cut into quarters
1 large carrot, cut into chunks
4 cloves of garlic, in skin and smashed
2 celery stalks, cut into quarters

Combine all the ingredients in large stock pot, bring to a boil, reduce to simmer and let cook on stove uncovered for several hours. Stock should reduce by half.  Drain out vegetables & herbs and reserve stock to make stew. 

Marinated Beef
1 1/2 lb beef chuck, cut into 1" chunks
Salt & Pepper
3 bay leaves
2 cloves of garlic, peeled & smashed
Good quality red wine

Make sure beef is cut into pieces all similar in size and seasoned with salt & pepper. Place in a glass bowl with bay leaves and garlic. Pour enough wine to just cover the meat  Put mixture in fridge and let it sit at least 4 hours or as much as overnight.  Remove bay leaves and garlic.  Scoop meat from wine with a slotted spoon and reserve both  meat and wine.

Beef Stew
Olive Oil
1 c of flour, seasoned with salt & pepper
Marinated Beef
1 1/2 lb boiling onions, peeled
1 lbs fingerling potatoes, cut in half
2 cloves of garlic, minced
2 sprigs of thyme, leaves removed from stems
1 sprig of rosemary, leaved minced
1/4 cup tomato paste
Reserved wine from beef marinade
1 lb baby carrots
Beef Stock

Heat oil in a large dutch oven.  Dredge meat lightly in seasoned flour.  Shake excess flour off meat before placing in dutch oven.  Brown meat on all sides and if necessary do so in batches taking care not to crowd the pan.  Set browned meat aside.  Add more oil to the dutch oven if needed.  Put onion in dutch oven and cook 2-3 minutes and then add potatoes and garlic.  Cook for 5 minutes.  Stir in thyme, rosemary and tomato paste.  Add red wine and make sure heat is on high.  Bring wine to a boil and ensure you are deg-lazing the bottom of the pan.  Add beef and carrots and then pour in beef stock.  Add just enough stock to cover the meat and vegetables.  This is a big mistake people make in adding too much stock so then it boils the meat and doesn't taste as good.  Once this mixture is simmering, turn the heat to low, cover and cook 1 hour until vegetables are cooked and meat is tender.  Serve with chopped parsley on top. 

BEEF STEW

Apple Crisp with Honey Cinnamon Ice Cream

I've done a couple of posts about pumpkins this fall so I thought today I'd turn my attention to the other abundant crop this time of year - apples.  However I don't have my own recipe to post tonight because when it comes to baking I tend to relay on others expertise.  I am a big fan of Ina Garten because she loves to cook classic dishes with a twist to elevate the flavours but doesn't make things too complicated.  I have been itching to make some type of cinnamon ice cream and of course what would go better with that then apple crisp. This past weekend afforded me the perfect opportunity as we were having a family get together. 

For the apple crisp check out Ina Garten's recipe here - I didn't change a thing but really appreciated the citrus zest and juice especially with it being both lemon and orange.  My crisp didn't crisp up in the 60 mins cooking time so I then turned on the broiler and cooked it for a few minutes more - beware I did not leave the oven during this time because a second too long and it could easily burn.

In my quest to find a cinnamon ice cream I thought it would be even better to find a one that used honey as the sweetener instead of sugar. I also didn't want to make what I'm discovering is a custard ice cream base and those use eggs.  So I wanted a more simple preparation.  I found the perfect recipe in terms of what I was looking for here and it turned out to be delicious. This is the reason I bought the ice cream maker - the chance to make flavours you don't find in the store when you have an inspiration. 

This was the epitome of a fall dessert - sweet apples with a crispy crunch and a creamy, warm ice cream melting over the top. Yummy!

APPLE CRISP & HONEY CINNAMON ICE CREAM