As the summer hits New York City, and I experience its heat, its humidity so thick it’s hard to breathe, its sleepy days and frenetic nights, I’m brought to a far away place where I spent a summer now six years ago. El Salvador, a tiny Central American country where the heat never breaks, and life moves painfully slowly and so fast you can’t keep up all at once.
I’ve had a long time to reflect on my time there. Most time in El Salvador, including mine there, is spent outdoors. Their national song, a poetic description of the Salvadoran people’s dignity, courage and strength in the face of brutal repression and a horrible war begins with “the Salvadoran people have the sky for a hat,” meaning that they are always outside, retreating only inside to sleep. The family I lived with for those three intense months, like most Salvadoran families, had no formal kitchen. They had a large sink, called a pila, outside under a tree, where all washing (and I mean to say I washed my dishes, my clothing and stood there nude at night and washed myself) takes place. They had a small gas range and a refrigerator also outside, protected by a porch. Like most Salvadoran families, they had no oven, and bought most of their food already prepared from street vendors, cooking only on the occasional Sunday after church. This is a place where it is always too hot to cook.
I think about this now, when my computer’s weather monitor says it’s 99 degrees, and I too eat mostly food that’s already prepared, or that requires no cooking and certainly no baking. The only baked good I ever ate there was a sweet and savory cheese bread known there as “quesadilla,” not to be confused with the more popular Mexican version. No one taught me to make it, as it is made there only in restaurant kitchens and not private homes. I’ve made it here several times, substituting Parmesan for Salvadoran cheese, which is remarkably similar but somehow different all at once.
Here is a Salvadoran Quesadilla recipe, taken from epicurious.com, for days I want to remember El Salvador, but it thankfully isn’t too hot to cook:
- 1 3/4 cups sifted cake flour (not self-rising; sift before measuring)
- 1 teaspoon baking powder
- 1/4 teaspoon salt
- 1 stick unsalted butter, softened
- 3/4 cup sugar
- 2 large eggs at room temperature 30 minutes
- 3 tablespoons sour cream
- 1/2 ounces finely grated parmesan
- 1/2 cup whole milk
- 1 teaspoon sesame seeds (optional), not toasted
They say to use a 9×5 inch loaf pan, however, I’ve only ever seen this made in round cake pans.
Preheat oven to 400°F with rack in middle. Line bottom and sides of pan with parchment paper.
Whisk together flour, baking powder, and salt. Beat butter and sugar in another bowl with an electric mixer at medium-high speed until pale, about 1 minute. Beat in eggs, sour cream, and cheese.
Reduce speed to low and mix in milk. Add flour mixture and mix until just combined.
Transfer batter to pan and smooth top. Sprinkle with sesame seeds (if using). Bake until a wooden pick or skewer inserted into center of cake comes out clean, 30 to 40 minutes.
Cool to warm in pan, 20 to 30 minutes. Turn cake out onto a rack. Serve cake slightly warm or at room temperature.
Last week, I sent out a missive to the internets, wondering what on earth I should do with a massive head of napa cabbage I’d received from my CSA share. This week was a bit crazy, and I didn’t have a chance to actually sort out how to cook it or use it until yesterday. And what I came up with was a riff on lettuce wraps. If you’re not feeling up to eating the monster raw, take heart. I will be trying a whole bunch of other recipes soon to get this cabbage cooked before it goes bad. Kimchi anyone?
I used a mishmash of items from the fridge, and came up with something lovely and delicious. I would definitely recommend using the tender, inner leaves of your Napa cabbage, since the outer leaves can be somewhat tough. I would also recommend cutting out the central rib from the leaves, as this makes it easier both to roll AND to eat without spraying the filling all over your face.
Napa Cabbage Lettuce Wraps
1. Begin by breaking 1-2 handfuls of rice stick noodles in half, and putting them to soak in hot tap water.
2. Julienne 2 golfball-sized Japanese turnips, chop a few bundles of baby bok choy, and mince 2 cloves of garlic. Heat 2 tablespoons of oil in a skillet over moderately high heat, and throw in the veggies. Season with salt, and saute until they’re starting to pick up some color.
3. Throw in some diced cooked chicken (or shredded, or whatever) and stir around until the chicken is heated through. At that point, add the rice noodles into the pan, with some of the soaking water to make sure everything gets cooked. Add more salt if you need to at this point.
4. Make the sauce. Scoop 2 tablespoons of peanut butter (I used honey roasted, but any kind will work), and 1 teaspoon of red curry paste into a bowl. Whisk together as best you can, and then add a small drizzle of sesame oil. You just want it to thin out the sauce, and add a little depth. When the noodles are softened, add the whole mess in the skillet to the sauce and toss. The heat from the items formerly in the skillet will melt the sauce and help it coat everything. Now is the time to add an additional drizzle of sesame oil, more curry paste, or maybe some soy sauce, if you feel like it needs something.
5. Prepare the cabbage. Peel the leaves off, rinse them under cold water, dry them, and cut out the central ribs. Then, assemble your friends and loved ones, and start rolling!
Cabbage wraps are tasty. There’s lots of green in this dish (as well as protein from the peanut butter and the chicken) and plenty of crunch. The warm filling plus the cool cabbage made a nice contrast, and tasted pretty fantastic.
The stove was on for a grand total of 15 minutes to make this dish, which feels like an instant AND a lifetime as the weather heats up and my kitchen remains windowless. But from those 15 minutes at the stove comes a lovely, crisp, cool-warm-crashing meal that you can cook for 2 or 10 with basically the same items.
And honestly, if I’d thought about it, I probably should have made it for 12 — much less cabbage left to work with that way!
One of the greatest things about food is that it lets you travel without leaving home. Traveling to far away places might not happen every day, but eating their cuisines can. In that vein, today I bring you a cookie recipe from either side of the Aegean.
Lemon-Polenta Cookies:
* 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
* 3/4 cup polenta (yellow cornmeal)
* pinch of salt
* 1 stick unsalted butter, softened
* 1/2 cup sugar
* 1/2 tablespoon lemon zest, (1 lemon)
* 1 large egg
* 1/2 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
Pre-heat to 350. Whisk together the dry ingredients, set aside. Cream the butter, sugar and lemon zest until light and fluffy. Add in the egg, the the vanilla. Slowly add in the dry mixture.
Place the batter into a pastry bag with a large star tip. Pipe 2-3 inch S-Shapes onto parchment lined cookie sheets, spaced at least 1/2 an inch apart. Bake for 15-18 minutes.
My cookies came out flatter than the recipe’s picture, but they were wonderfully moist and stayed for several days.
Kourambiethes (Greek Powdered Sugar Cookies)
*2 sticks of butter, creamed until fluffy
*1 egg yolk
*2 (or more) cups flour
*1/2 tsp baking powder
*3 tsp liquor (brandy or whisky work well)
*1 tsp vanilla
*1/2 cup chopped almonds
Preheat to 350. Add 1/2 cup powdered sugar to the butter and beat well. Beat in the egg yolk, vanilla and liquor. Add the almonds and enough flour so that the dough stops sticking to the side of the bowl.
Shape the cookies into small crescents, place them on a parchment lined baking sheet, and bake for 15 minutes or so. Let cool for about 5 minutes.
Transfer to a clean surface, placing the very close together. Dust with confectioner’s sugar, using a mesh sieve. Let cool completely.
Not sure that I’ve mentioned it lately, but I am a member of the Greene Harvest CSA. It’s a wonderful organization, and I’m already so excited about what we’ve been getting and will continue to get for the rest of the summer. We’re having some trouble consuming all the veggies each week, but as my schedule becomes more of a…. schedule, and as we can plan meals around our haul every week, I’m sure this will all improve.
Yesterday, part of the pickup involved a HUGE napa cabbage. When the volunteer passed it over to me, she laughed and said that I’d won the prize. Seriously this cabbage is bigger than my head, and weighs a ton. I asked the volunteer what she would do with a napa cabbage, and she gave me suggestions such as miso soup and stir fry. I’m not a closed-minded cook, but it’s hotter than bejeebus, and I’m certainly not going to stand over a pot of soup or a blazing hot wok right now. So I’m looking for other options.
Things that I’ve found on the internet include modified lettuce wraps, several salads, a few noodle dishes that look really enticing, and various pickled twists on kimchi.
I’m not sure which of these I’ll try, but as I’ve got so darn much cabbage, I can probably play with as many of them as I want. What would you do with a big-ass head of napa cabbage?? I’m definitely thinking some chicken-rice cabbage wraps might be on the menu for this hot week, as they’ll feel nice and cool. Maybe I can even cute it up and make a curried chicken salad and use that, along with some of the Japanese turnips and scallions from last week, and roll it all up in some napa leaves. Any suggestions from any of the readers out there for what I should do with the ridiculously huge Napa Cabbage sitting in my crisper?
Shout it out, and stay tuned for this and more adventures from The Improviser Learns New Veggies!
My recent gap in posting was unfortunately due to being sick, so I wasn’t all there enough to write down any coherent thoughts last week. I’m doing ok now — 24 hours of sleep helps! But the real casualty is that I was supposed to host a dinner party for four the day I could barely keep my eyes open at work. It was a real shame because I had a totally bomb menu planned taking advantage of my CSA greens and was looking forward to catching up with old friends. Sigh.
After coming home just a couple of hours at work and sleeping for 7 hours I realized though I wasn’t hungry all the food and supplies I bought were going to rot if I didn’t cook something so I thought ‘To hell with it’ and just made most of what I had planned in the first place and figured I’d eat the rest later. This turned out to be a damned good idea because it was probably one of the best dinners I’ve ever made. Too bad no one else was there to have any!
First off, since it was to be a sort of special occasion after not seeing friends for so long, I had bought four fillets of salmon. Right there that made dinner fancier than usual. Sure it was a little more expensive than groceries normally are but I figured I was saving money with all the produce I had acquired. And besides, pesto was involved and pesto with tilapia doesn’t jibe as nicely, at least in my mind.
Next, last week’s CSA share consisted of some veggies outside of my usual repertoire, like escarole. I have nothing against it but I didn’t know what to do with it and I figured I’d use it all up first. This is how I came up with a Braised Escarole with Cannellini Beans appetizer. Ok, I didn’t “come up” with it but I did read that escarole and white beans go together superbly and I found a fantastic recipe along with much commentary at this website. so no, I did not create it.
Discovery: escarole needs to be braised or sauteed for quite a while since it’s pretty bitter raw! The recipe I just linked to was absolutely delicious. Had I served it to friends It would have been spooned atop whole wheat flatbreads as an appetizer but I ate it as a side. The recipe can also be more like a soup, if that catches your fancy.
As the main, my CSA provided us with a simple but delicious recipe for Pan-Seared Salmon on a Bed of Baby Greens with Dried Cherries along with a recipe for an orange zest dressing. (Thus the salmon purchase!) Uh, yes, this was truly amazing. Lucky for me, one of the farmers is a trained chef and sends us weekly recipes and ideas!
The only real “recipe” part to this was the dressing, since it’s: plate some baby greens. Make the dressing. Pan-sear the salmon (skinned) on both sides for a few minutes until each side is golden brown. Season with salt and pepper. Dress the greens using half of the dressing. Place the salmon on top of the greens. Drizzle the rest of the dressing along with the dried cherries that have been marinating in the dressing. Voila! I used golden raisins instead which worked just as well! So here is that dressing:
Orange-Zest Salad Dressing
- 2 1/2 tbsp champagne or white wine vinegar [I used red wine vinegar]
- 2 tbsp fresh orange juice
- 1 tsp orange zest
- salt, pepper
- 1/4 cup dried cherries [I used golden raisins]
- 1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil
Combine except olive oil and set aside. Pan-sear the salmon in the meantime, instructions above. Remove cherries/raisins from dressing. Whisk the olive oil in until blended. Dress half of it onto the greens. Plate the salmon. Drizzle remaining dressing on fish with cherries/raisins to garnish. Serve.
Simple but seems so fancy. Also, way, way tasty. Since I received so much spinach last week I had made some spinach with walnut pesto to use some of it up and scooped some atop the fish too. It was a very thick pesto, more like a tapenade. Either way it was good too. With all of these lettuces and greens I will need more salad dressing ideas so if anyone has any please let me know! I really don’t make them myself too often.
I would have made a grain as a side but just for myself, this was all much more than enough. Dessert was some blueberries and strawberries. Hopefully next time people are over for dinner I’ll be able to cook something just as special.
Posted: June 15, 2010 |
Author: Alyssa |
Filed under: Alyssa |
3 Comments »
Dear readers,
The big day is here! I’m officially moving this week, and then going up to teach in a school in the mountains for the summer. Good for me, if not slightly (hugely) terrifying and stressful, but less than good for you all. What all this stuff means is that I will have limited to no computer access and pretty much zero kitchen access until mid-august. Sad 
So I will be doing what I can, but for the most part I will be disappearing for a few weeks. I apologize for this pause in awesomeness, luckily you still have Bakezilla, The Improviser, and the Kosher chic (who are all more than just awesome) to post about their fantastic recipes.
I will be back with more kitchen antics in a few weeks
Love to all you food lovers out there,
TT
I love Brunch. The best thing, I think, about living in New York City is that brunch is a real meal. On Saturdays and Sundays from 10am to 4pm, you can go to a restaurant and get foods that are neither on the breakfast nor the dinner menu – and drinks that you would never order if it was dinner.
My favorite place to get brunch is Essex, in Manhattan’s Lower East Side. Essex serves som great brunch fare – excellent eggs benedict, a cubano that makes even this skeptic’s mouth water. Their Bloody Marys are spicy and strong, and the waitresses walk around with pitchers of mimosas, and up until recently, they didn’t keep count, so your 3 free mimosas were more like “3″ free mimosas.
Shamefully, even though I always say that I’m going to branch out and try some of their other wondrous things, I always end up getting one of 2 things; I love the Southern – biscuits and sausage gravy with fried eggs – and I love love the Mexican Matzo Brei – basically migas, with black beans and chunky guacamole.
I’ve tried a couple of their other offerings, but sadly I was disappointed – I always come back to the two faves, and my absolute favorite is the Mexican Matzo Brei. I generally don’t try to replicate restaurant favorites at home, instead leaving them to the experts. I believe that if you can do something perfectly, I should pay you for that.
However, a few weeks ago I was motivated to attempt to make Mexican Matzo Brei in my own kitchen. I blame the Pioneer Woman, mostly. She had a recipe in her cookbook for Migas, which I decided I would hack, because I didn’t have the patience to fry my own tortillas, and I don’t do cilantro. As I was reading it over, I realized with a start that here was the thing I’d been hoping for all my life! A recipe for Essex’s Mexican Matzo Brei!! I ran to assemble the ingredients, and started cooking.
Mexican-Matzo-Migas
adapted from The Pioneer Woman Cooks and Essex restaurant
1. Assemble your cast of characters: 1 bag of tortilla chips, 6 eggs, Shredded “taco” cheese, 1 red bell pepper, 1 jalapeno pepper, 1 fryer pepper(aka cubanelle), 1 tomato, 1 red onion.
2. Dice 1/2 the red onion, 1 red bell pepper, and 1/2 the fryer pepper very finely and evenly. Heat up 1-2 tablespoons of butter in a skillet over medium-high heat, and add the red onion and peppers. Cook until they are brown, but NOT sweated- we want crunch, not mush.
3. Beat the eggs with 1/4-1/2 cup of milk, salt, and pepper. Crush 2-3 big handfuls of tortilla chips until they’re roughly 1/2 inch squares, not to powder.
4. Chop up 1 tomato and 1 jalapeno pepper, seeds and ribs removed (unless you want the heat) and add the tortilla chips and jalapenos to the skillet. Stir, cook for about 30 seconds, and add the tomatoes.
5. Add the eggs, folding gently to cook the eggs without smashing things up or turning them to mush. When they’re mostly set to your liking (I like mine pretty soft), sprinkle with shredded cheese and try not to drool.
I also served these with some Tasty Black Beans, which I’m premiering later this week on this blog, and some chunky guacamole. While it’s no replacement for Essex, and I’d rather go drink mimosas and not have to wash the dishes after, (not to mention eating a pre-brunch cupcake if the line is long at Essex), I really enjoy knowing that I can have Mexican Matzo-Brei anytime my little heart desires!
Try this, and tell me about YOUR favorite brunch dishes! Maybe we can have an at-home brunch revolution!
Sometimes I wonder if I’ve gone crackers. I mean, don’t we all? Well, I don’t have an answer to that question, but I did make some crackers and an eggplant spread to go with them recently. Making food probably helps keep me sane, so I make crackers and not go crackers.
Herbed Whole-Wheat Flatbread:
Ingredients:
a cup of warm water
one packet active dry yeast
1 1/2 cups all purpose flour
1 1/2 cups whole wheat flour
4 tbs olive oil
Coarse salt
1 tsp sugar
1 egg
Fresh herbs (your choice)
1. Place water in a mixing bowl and sprinkle yeast in. Allow to stand for about 5 minutes. Stir in flours, oil, 2 tsp salt, sugar. Stir until it forms a dough.
2. Turn the dough out onto a floured surface, knead 2-3 minutes. Lightly oil a large bowl, put the dough in it, cover it, and allow the dough to rise for an hour. While you’re waiting, chop up some fresh herbs in any combination you’d like, I used oregano and rosemary for mine. You’ll need about 3/4 of a cup total.
3. Preheat the oven to 350. In a small bowl, mix the egg with a tablespoon of water and set aside. Put parchment on a baking sheet. Divide the dough into 16 equal pieces. Roll out the pieces into long, thin crackers and put them on the sheet (do this as quickly as possible, the dough continues to rise). Brush the crackers with the egg wash, and sprinkle on some salt (not too much! a pinch will do), and herbs onto the crackers.
4. Bake about 20 minutes, allow to cool.
Caponata (Italian Eggplant Spread)
This is a tasty, healthy spread to top your crackers.
Ingredients:
2 medium eggplants
2 tbs red wine or cider vinegar
1 tbs sugar
1 cup chopped cilantro
2/3 cup chopped roasted red peppers (jarred = okay)
1/4 cup rinsed capers
1. Preheat the oven to 350. Cut the eggplants in half and put them on a parchment lined baking sheet. Roast for 45 minutes – 1 hour, allowing them to get soft and their bitter juices to leak out. Let cool until you can touch them without hurting yourself.
2. Scoop the flesh out of the eggplants, throw away the skins. Add vinegar, sugar, a dash of salt and pepper and stir. Allow to cool.
3. Put in the remaining ingredients. Place the caponata in the fridge for at least an hour.
This spread will stay for several days in the fridge, and can be eaten cold or room temperature.
Posted: June 5, 2010 |
Author: Alyssa |
Filed under: Alyssa |
5 Comments »
Have you ever done something eight thousand times without thinking about it, and then the one time you really put all your effort into it, you can’t get it to work for the life of you? This is pretty much the course of my life, so I shouldn’t have been surprised when it happened over memorial day weekend. I was going to a cookout at boy’s friend’s house, and he requested that I make flour-less chocolate cake to bring. I have been making this recipe for a while, and it always comes out really well. Its velvety with a melt in your mouth texture, and super chocolaty. I made it the day before because it has to chill overnight to set, and everything seemed to be perfect.
On Sunday, I decided to make some pinwheel munchies in addition to the cake. I decided on spinach and cheese, and then remembering the guys I was cooking for, decided to do HALF spinach and cheese, and the other half chicken, bacon and ranch. Pinwheels are absurdly easy, and everyone really seemed to like them.
Pinwheels:
Thaw two sheets of frozen puff pastry and unfold them onto a floured surface. Some people will tell you to roll it out a little bit to thin it, but I just flour my hands and thin it out with my fingers because its easier.
Spinach filling:
1pkg frozen spinach
grated gruyere
diced garlic
sour cream.
Cook the spinach and drain it completely, then add the garlic, and cheese. I wanted something to hold it all together and the only thing I had was sour cream, but you could use anything really. Add just enough until it is all bound together but don’t add so much that it becomes a base.
Chicken filling:
1 chk breast, roasted and diced
3 pieces bacon cooked and diced
cheddar cheese grated
ranch dressing
Mix together the chicken, bacon, and cheese, then add the ranch until it all sticks together and tastes like you want it to.
Spread the filling on the pastry and roll up like a jelly roll
Wrap the roll in plastic wrap and put it in the freezer for about 30-45 minutes to make it easier to slice. Slice it into about 1/4 inch slices and bake at 400 for about 15 min until golden brown.
The pinwheels are really quick and easy to make, so I was thinking this was going to be just another day.
FALSE
While the first set of pinwheels were baking, I pulled the cake out of the fridge, soak the bottom of the pan in hot water for 10 seconds and flip it onto a plate, just like I have done 100 times in the past. Normally, the pan slides off nicely leaving a beautiful chocolate cake behind. Not today…I COULD NOT get that damn cake out of the pan. I soaked it, I hit it I banged it on the counter, I tried to gently loosen the sides with a plastic knife, nothing. Finally, I was pissed off enough to just jam a knife down the sides and run it all around, ruining the edges of the cake and still not releasing it from its nonstick prison. After more pounding, prying and cursing to the point of making a sailor blush, I finally got it out of the pan and on to a plate…where it promtly sagged in the middle because it was not fully cooked despite the fact that I had done EXACTLY the same thing I had done in the past. Pissed off to the point of no return I decide to leave the cake for a minute, and finish up the second batch of pinwheels that have one minute left on the timer.
I open the oven to check them, and they are barely cooked. Turns out, when I turned off the timer from the first batch of pinwheels, I also inadvertently turned off the oven. So as I’m supposed to be walking out the door, I am kicking things, cursing, turning the over back on hoping that they will cook in the next 15 minutes, and trying to deal with the great cake debacle. After a quick text to let the most patient man on the planet know that I will be late, I try to figure out what the hell has happened to my life in the past 45 min and how to fix it, which at this point is just me trying to put lipstick on a pig and call it America’s next top model.
I have the cake back in the fridge trying to keep it chilled for as long as possible, realizing that once it starts to warm up, there is a solid possibility that it will melt all over the place. I finally get an idea and (at this point its more about presentation than salvation) pull out one of my springform pans. I take out the bottom and flip the cake onto it, and then put the form back on to keep the sides in place. It actually looked like a normal cake, and that was the best I could do, so I covered it in tinfoil and hoped for the best. The pinwheels were finally done, so I threw those into the container and ran out the door, almost 40 minutes late at this point.
The pinwheels were good, but the cake was a melted disaster (think moldable pudding), but luckily it tasted good, so everyone seemed pretty happy about it.
It was probably one of the worst cooking days I’ve ever had, but after a couple of beers and game of cornhole, that I sucked at by the way, it was actually a pretty good memorial day.
As a pretty-much vegetarian most of my grocery bill goes to fresh produce. Gush over Trader Joe’s as much as you want but I’ll never be much of a fan as long as they offer scant veggies and fruit — almost none of it organic at that! Previously I mentioned that I am joining a CSA, which stands for Community Supported Agriculture, where us city (and suburban) folk buy shares of wares fresh from the farm. There are lots of advantages to this for both sides but I’m mainly excited for the guaranteed weekly vegetables. Now I can splurge on fancy stuff at the grocery store since the CSA is paid for in advance! Yeah, I’m looking at you, skyr.
Yesterday was the very first day of my CSA’s pickup and my fellow foodies and I were quite impressed by the haul:
Now, I have a half-share, so everything listed on the sign is halved and split with my partner, some guy the coordinators paired me randomly with. While this is a cool way to meet new people in the CSA community, the guy never answered my email when I asked a logistical question and he hadn’t shown by the time I arrived. Not sure what’s up with that. A generous afterthought is that any leftover shares goes to the synagogue that hosts this CSA’s homeless shelter kitchen, so they will have fresh veggies themselves. Maybe that’s where this guy’s stuff will end up.
I eagerly carried my swag back home and cleaned them all now so I won’t have to waste time doing so later this week. Vegetables have to be koshered too: rinse or swish them in water three times, no more, no less. This is to assure that there are no insects hiding underneath leaves and one of the most forbidden things Jews can eat are insects. This took a long time!
Helpfully, the CSA sent out a newsletter the day before indicating what we’d be receiving along with a recipe, because I sure don’t know what do to with all of these greens. This week it was for a mango salsa and it contains cilantro:
Mango-Cilantro Salsa
Serves 3
Recipe by Maryellen Driscoll
1 heaping cup chopped mango (thawed, frozen mango works fine)
2 tablespoons chopped green onions
2 tablespoons chopped fresh cilantro
1 1/2 tablespoons freshly squeezed lime juice
2 tablespoons mild-flavored oil, such as peanut, walnut or grapeseed
Large pinch of red pepper flakes (or minced fresh jalapeño, amount to your liking)
Combine all of the above ingredients in a small bowl. Season with kosher salt & freshly ground black pepper to taste. Let sit, refrigerated, for up to 4 hours before serving.
———-
Luckily I happened to have mango and limes on hand, but not peanut oil, so I just used olive oil. I also spiced it up with pepper and chilli powder but it remained pretty mild. I was considering eating it for dessert but I think I will let it set in the fridge and marinate it on some fish tomorrow.
Mostly I was dreaming about eating bok choy but now that I think about it I have no idea how to prepare it! Instead I made a giant-ass salad and used maybe 1/8 of this week’s veggie haul. Bok choy will require some research.
In this salad is romaine, mixed greens, arugula, sliced radishes, a couple of stalks of green onions, half of a plum tomato, a handful of pumpkin seeds (raw), chickpeas, one beet, broccoli florets, 3 cloves garlic and dried raisins, cranberries and a couple of pecans. The dressing is a spiced olive oil/red wine vinegar/honey mix.
From the first bite you could tell these greens were fresh from the farm. The leaves are bigger, the texture silkier — especially the mixed greens, and all in all they were more flavorful too. This was picked THIS morning! Isn’t it amazing? And isn’t it furthermore amazing that people have so lost touch with the land and what they choose to consume that it’s novel, almost revolutionary, to buy food from farmers? Wow. I wish more people were able to experience this, especially for those that vegetables at all are considered a luxury.
On the other hand, this is a ton of food. Not sure how I’m going to use it all up every week, especially if earlier in the season means less items. Does this mean this is the least amount of stuff I’m going to receive for the next 21 weeks?? Eek. Weekly dinner parties at Rita’s?
