Quinoa with Roasted Chanterelles, Apples, and Squash

I have never tried chanterelle mushrooms before, so I thought this pretty quinoa bowl would be a great time to have them.  (Let's please ignore the price tag on these mushrooms - I don't even want to talk about it.)  All the ingredients appealed to me - I don't eat quinoa often enough, and winter squash, apples, and red onions are all super tasty.  Unfortunately, I found this to be just a little bit bland.  I used what I felt was a ton of thyme and just a splash more sherry vinegar than instructed, but it could have used a strong flavor that ties it all together.  If I make (something similar to but less pricey than) this again, I think I'll include some sherry vinegar when roasting the squash and apples.  A squeeze of lemon juice might also elevate the dish a bit.  This has inspired me to try to make up my own quinoa bowls to get more of that protein-packed "grain" into my diet.  If I feel the urge to buy chanterelles again, I want to try the Chanterelle Tacos from Super Natural Every Day.

Herbed Bean and Sausage Stew (Dark Days 2)

On Thursday, I took a little shopping trip.  I went to Whole Earth Center, the Princeton farmers market (indoors!), and Whole Foods.  The primary goal of this excursion was to supply myself with local foods for the Dark Days challenge.  I was surprised to see so many vegetables at the farmers' market, and one farmer I spoke with said she hopes to have veggies all winter, since she is growing some cold-weather treats in an unheated greenhouse.  I stocked up on pretty much everything, and my refrigerator is stuffed.  I even got a few pounds of potatoes.  I'm looking forward to taking advantage of this local stash for the challenge.  I even got a bottle of wine from Terhune Orchards - I'm looking forward to basically just drinking it because it tastes SO GOOD!  I think it's a bit too sweet to cook with though.

I also stopped at Whole Earth Center, specifically to get whatever beans and grains they carry from Cayuga Pure Organics.  This farm is in New York State - Google says about 212 miles from my house.  I consider this local enough and having beans and grains certainly expands my options for local meals (like today's).  I ended up going home with Jacob's Cattle beans, pinto beans, and hard red winter wheat berries.  I'm sure Whole Earth Center has other local products as well, which I intend to investigate further when I have a little more free time.  I believe I saw some local flour there so maybe we can add some bread or baked goods to the menu.  At Whole Foods, I was able to get some staples like onions and white sweet potatoes.  This will require some exploring as well.

As I get into this challenge and think about it more and more, I'm thinking about what I care about most in this challenge.  I'm trying to do the local thing - but I'm NOT trying to eat bland or unsalted food.  I'm not giving up salt - sorry.  I also believe that globalization has brought us some pretty neat things, like spices from other parts of the world.  So I'm going to aim to make my meals as local as is reasonably possible without sacrificing the taste.  I'll try to choose organic (or sustainable) when local isn't an option.  I'll try to pay more attention to ethics (like fair trade and all that stuff which I don't know much about).  And most importantly I'll learn how I can set myself up to have an easier time next year (dry/freeze herbs, can more, etc.  I'm willing to make a few sacrifices, but enjoying the food I make isn't going to be one of them.

That being said, I chose to tackle this stew for my second Dark Days meal.  The bulk of the elements are local - the sausage are from Cherry Grove and the Jacob's Cattle beans are from Cayuga Pure Organics.  The carrots are from our CSA, the onions were labeled as local at Whole Foods, the garlic came from a farmer at the Princeton market, the rosemary from a pot in my house, the thyme considered local by Whole Foods (it came from Virginia, and I'm OK with that).  The celery isn't local, but it is organic (I think, it's been in the crisper for a while now).  The rest of the ingredients (teaspoons or less of each) are not local.  I got most of them at Whole Foods so I can have a bit more confidence in the ethics than I would from the market around the corner or Shop Rite.  I know this isn't good enough for some people, but I'm just taking it as an opportunity for improvement.

After all this - how did the soup turn out?

Well, I wasn't watching too closely, and so my beans were cooked a bit more than I would have liked.  Some split and released their starchiness into the soup, thickening it up into a goopy mess.  (This is what it's supposed to look like.)  Frankly, the beans I used (which I used because they're local) were the absolute worst type of beans I could have used for this dish - way too starchy, not really intended for soups and stews.  I had a few bites and I don't think I'm going to be able to eat much more of it.  The lesson learned here today is not to make swaps in recipes when you don't know what you're doing, and not all dishes are going to work with the ingredients available to you locally.  I intend to try this recipe again with the originally suggested beans and no regard for local ingredients!

To end on a more positive note, my sister actually loved this soup.  And I think if cooked properly, the beans I used today could be used to make this, which would make it a great option for a Dark Days meal.  I'll have to try cooking them again and give it a shot.

Mediterranean Baked Eggs

These Mediterranean Baked Eggs are in a blue box off to the side of another recipe.  While the recipe takes up a whole page, it's set off to the side, not a featured recipe.  The book is Ancient Grains for Modern Meals, and these baked eggs have no grains in them.  However, they've stuck in my mind since I got the book.  This is funny for a few reasons - one is the sheer number of recipes I see.  For any to stick in my mind means they must be something special.  The second reason?  I'm not big on eggs.  Specifically egg yolks.  But... these were delicious.  Granted, I did not eat my yolk (which cooked too much to be good, anyway), but I still enjoyed the eggs.  The tomato sauce was extremely flavorful, despite my forgetting to "season" it with red wine vinegar and brown sugar.  You can make the sauce ahead, so this makes a perfect brunch recipe - keep an eye on it in the oven, then take it out and let it finish cooking while you're finishing up everything else.  The toast is essential, but you can multitask in the oven and just lay the slices across the racks to toast.  What a great little weekend brunch this was for the two of us, and I expect to be adding it to my spread the next time I host a brunch for friends.

PS: note my Le Creuset Mini-Cocottes.  A birthday present that I absolutely adore.  :)

White Bean and Black Kale Minestra with Farro

This delicious soup recipe is from Vegetable Soups from Deborah Madison's Kitchen, one of the books I got from the library for the October "featured" thing on 101 Cookbooks Library.  This may just be the Ribollita of 2011.  It's simple and the flavors aren't at all exotic, but it's so comforting and nourishing - just what I wanted after eating tons of cake and pie all weekend!  Kale is my favorite, I love tomato-based soups, and the chewy farro was perfect to give it body.  I used the Rancho Gordo cannellini beans, which are way too huge for the soup - everything else was cut into pieces closer to the size of the farro, and the giant beans disrupted the harmony.  I might try navy beans or flageolet next time.  And yes, there is going to be a next time.  It's a simple soup that could be made at any time of year.  I managed to find a little room in the freezer for this one, but as soon as it's gone, I'm sure I'll be making this again.

Fruit and Nut Filling for Baked Zucchini

This is the second recipe I tried from Tender, and it was so much better than the first.  I did run into several issues - my zucchini didn't cook through, for one, even though I was cooking much less of it than the recipe called for - but I was able to overcome them pretty well.  One note for myself for next time is to omit the breadcrumbs.  If this amount of filling is needed, double the couscous instead.  The breadcrumbs, though I had to improvise them using lavash which may have affected their success, did not really add anything to the dish.  The yogurt-dill sauce was delicious and compensated for the slight dryness of the couscous filling.  I would also love to try this with the fat round zucchini that you can actually hollow out and stuff.  Quinoa could make a nice substitute for the couscous and would add protein to the meal.  I could also see turning this into a kind of grain salad... chop up the zucchini (maybe grill it first?) and mix it all together.

Winter Squash Soup with Gruyere Toasts

My friend Hilary came over last Saturday afternoon to make Winter Squash Soup with Gruyere Toasts.  We love winter squash and a discussion with her is what somehow made me start making soup all of a sudden.  The Gruyere "croutons" (we decided that they are really toasts) made this soup extra special.

This soup stood out to me a bit over some of the others I've been making.  One reason was the use of both butternut AND acorn squash - the acorn seemed to mute the excessive sweetness that butternut can have.  I thought the combination created an outstanding flavor.  This soup was also a bit thinner than the other soups I've made with squash - just a tiny bit thinner, but noticeably so, and somehow this made a big textural difference to me.  I finished the bowl pretty easily (with thicker soups I sometimes have to force myself through the texture, even if I'm still hungry).  The sage and thyme were perfect flavors for the soup and for the season, and carrying them over into the amazing little toasts tied it all together.  I LOVE Gruyere, so this might have been my favorite part, even more than the soup, but just a little.

This is a soup that I hope to come back to again!  Luckily I was able to stash a bit in the freezer, labeled with specific instructions to serve with Gruyere toasts.

Mushroom Bourguignon

It makes me so happy to hear that my friends are obsessed with food like me!  I find that one food blog we often have in common is Smitten Kitchen.  My friend Hilary mentioned to me how great the Mushroom Bourguignon recipe was, and when I looked it up, my mouth started watering pretty much instantly.  It looked amazing.  With the weather getting colder, it's time for some comfort food!

Fortunately, it was exactly what I thought it would be.  I did have to boil the crap out of it at the end to get it to thicken enough - and I think I threw in a little extra flour too - but in the end, it was just unbelievably delicious.  I used local mushrooms from the Rutgers Gardens market, which were on the pricey side, plus they took forever to clean and slice, so I may go the route of convenience packaging next time.  I used frozen pearl onions (as recommended) to make that part easier as well - they worked out perfectly fine.  I thought they tasted good!

We ate these over egg noodles - haven't had those in years! - and again, it was amazing.  It actually tastes exactly how the picture looks.  It's also filed under "freezer friendly" on the Smitten Kitchen website, so that just makes it all the more attractive to me!  I will definitely be making this again, and hopefully saving some for later too.

CSA: May 2010

My family joined an organic CSA this year.  I had been looking into doing this anyway, but I don't like doing things all by myself, especially when they involve waking up early and driving long distances weekly and having to cook more food than I can eat without really knowing what it will be until I get it.  So since my family has been going organic and trying to eat more healthy foods (thanks to my influence, although I haven't been able to blockade the house from Oreos and such) I talked to my mom about it and she signed us up.  She wasn't (and still isn't) quite as excited about it as I am, and probably isn't pleased with the flood of emails I am sending her every time the farm updates its website showing what is available this week, or the fact that I try to confirm our departure time (8:30AM, right? right? will you be ready?) every time we speak.  But we have had a good time so far, especially with the pick-your-own strawberries :)

I thought it might be nice, and probably helpful to us or someone else later on, if I document what we've been getting in our share and how we used it.  I figure I'll keep it to a monthly update so as not to bore you TOO much.

Week 1 (5/13/2010)
- 1 quart strawberries (PYO)
- a handful of mint
- 1/2 lb arugula

Week 2 (5/20/2010)
- 1 pint strawberries (PYO)
- a few sprigs of mint, thyme, oregano, catnip
- a bunch of chives with purple flowers :)  (see photo)
- 1 lb arugula
- 6 heads (!) green leaf lettuce

Week 3 (5/27/2010)
- 1/2 lb arugula
- 2 lbs spinach
- 6 heads of lettuce (2 green, 4 red)
- a few sprigs of mint and rosemary
- a bunch of chives
- 2 quarts strawberries (PYO)
- 1 pint snap peas (PYO)
- 1 bunch kale
- 1 bunch radishes
- 2 heads of bok choy

The strawberries have been eaten out of hand.  There haven't been enough so far to frustrate us into doing anything else with them.  Jersey strawberries are notably different from the giant monster California strawberries in the supermarket in that they are vine-ripened by the sun.  How can you tell?  That white core in the middle of your supermarket strawberries shouldn't be there.  You should have a red berry all the way through.  Those berries are picked white in California or Florida and shipped over to you, ripening in the truck on the way and sitting in the back of the store if they're not ripe enough.  Just another reason to choose local foods whenever possible.  Now that I've said my piece, I am hoping the strawberries will be around for another few weeks in copious amounts so that I can try my hand at canning in a hot water bath to preserve some of these delicious treats for the winter.

I happen to love arugula and its peppery flavor so I was THRILLED when I saw it in the farm stand.  In the beginning of the season, there usually isn't much down there, and you mostly go for the PYO stuff.  I was so excited to see something down there!  I first reached for one of my favorite recipes, Ottolenghi Red Rice and Quinoa, which is meant to be served over arugula.  The recipe makes quite a bit and I was able to eat this several times over the next few days.  This was awesome because I got to really taste the arugula - it was the BEST arugula I have ever had, hands down.  What a difference it makes to eat fresh greens the very day they were picked.  The following week I made an arugula pesto using a recipe from my mom's new Cooking Light book (one of my new favorites) which is organized by season.  By week 3 I was getting sick of it, since apparently I'm the only one who wants to eat arugula.  I ended up making another pesto from a neat book I got as a gift called New Flavors for Vegetables.  It's a Williams-Sonoma book.  It's meant for a recipe where you saute little yellow pear tomatoes and toss them with the pesto and feta cheese, but I just stuck it in the freezer (tomatoes aren't here yet).  I did taste a bit and it was delicious - I liked it better than the first pesto I made.  (You can read more about my arugula pesto in my post about it - when I get to posting it!)

The herbs are such a departure from those sold in the supermarket and even in our local farm markets.  It is amazing what a difference it makes!  The thyme was used in another recipe from the above mentioned Cooking Light book, a chicken breast stuffed with caramelized scallions, thyme and goat cheese with a delicious pan sauce poured over top.  The chives were served at the same meal, in another dish from the same book, sprinkled atop balsamic roasted spring vegetables.  The mint was used in mojitos, a zucchini fritatta, and cucumber and mint tea sandwiches for Mom's reading group.  The oregano was substituted for dried in our Four-Cheese Baked Penne (from Ellie Krieger's So Easy).  And of course Chipotle got the catnip :)

What do you do with 6 heads of lettuce?  Eat a LOT of salad.  Luckily, with 7 people down the shore we were able to finish off a big bowl of it.  I made a delicious balsamic vinaigrette from Clean Food, where I replaced the agave nectar with dijon mustard and emulsified it in a blender.  My little sister loved it so much she actually took home the tiny bit that was left over.  The great thing about freshly picked lettuce such as this is that it keeps longer than the lettuce you see in the store, so we weren't rushing to finish it and even after a few days it still looked much fresher than the storebought lettuce I had gotten a few days earlier (before I knew we would soon be swimming in greens).  By the second week of lettuce, I was doing mental calculations about how much we would each have to eat to get rid of all this lettuce by the next week - as a family, we would have to eat a head per day.  One woman in the farm stand said she was eating lettuce for breakfast, lunch and dinner!  I am glad we didn't take it quite that far.

I made a wrap on lavash bread using some of the lettuce, a few leaves of spinach, feta, roasted red peppers, and hummus.  It was pretty yummy.  The greens tasted really fresh.  I used only 3 or 4 leaves of the spinach, though.  Luckily, 2 lbs of spinach may sound like a lot, but it cooks down substantially! We had it cooked with garlic and olive oil with steak and potatoes.

I made the bok choy according to a recipe from New Flavors for Vegetables.  The recipe has you sautee the bok choy with sliced garlic and red pepper flakes and tosses it with toasted sesame seeds.  It was too spicy, so next time I would use less for sure, but I might make it again.  It would be nice with a drizzle of sesame oil to finish as well. 

Snap peas were much more fun to pick than strawberries!  Less leaves, less bugs, easier to reach.  We used them in one of our current favorite recipes for a Pork and Mango Stir Fry from So Easy.  (Someone has posted the recipe here.)

There were two types of radishes available - regular red ones and French breakfast - and we selected the more interesting bunch.  The week before, we had purchased regular radishes for a roasted baby spring vegetable recipe from the seasonal Cooking Light book, so we tried it again with these.  They were a bit more bitter.  I would probably choose the regular type next time.  None of us like raw radishes, but they are yummy when roasted.

We forgot about our little bunch of kale -- we were only reminded by two new bunches from the first June pickup.  We plan to use the older bunch to make kale chips.

Garlic Soup

I don't like soup. It might sound weird, but me craving soup usually means I am deathly ill. After much contemplation I have decided that I do not like chicken broth. I always eat the wontons but not the broth, and I prefer Campbell's Double Noodle over anything because it is basically entirely noodles.

For some reason, although I was not sick, I wanted to make soup. Not any soup in particular, but just soup. My big came over for a soup/study date and I wanted to max our working time and minimize our soup making time, so I picked a yummy sounding Garlic Soup from 101 Cookbooks.

Apparently everyone else was thinking, "Garlic soup? Just garlic? Could that actually be any good?" Um, yes. It can. And to have seen the bottom of a soup bowl for probably the first time in my life, I can tell you that this soup is worth the small amount of effort required to make it.

Probably the reason I like it so much is that it contains some things I like very much. Fresh herbs, a ridiculous amount of garlic, and freshly grated parmesan cheese. You make the broth using chopped garlic, thyme, bay leaf, and sage, then add a "binding pomade" of egg and cheese to thicken it up. It was a little complicated to physically do, so I'm glad I had an extra pair of hands, but I think I could do it myself if I had to (or just wanted to!) and I certainly plan to make this again. We are having an Indian Summer but the snow will come eventually and when it does I will be armed with this deliciousness.

There is not a thing to change about this recipe. I will make it again just as it is. The crusty bread is a must (though I prefer to dip rather than pour the soup over). It reheats just fine in the microwave. Due to my love for shortcuts and freezing things I am considering making the broth with the herbs and garlic and freezing it for a quicker soup. Hopefully it will work just as well.

Roasted Butternut Squash with Farro

I bought some butternut squash at the farmers' market because I have never tried it before and I wanted to try something new. I finally got to making this recipe from 101 Cookbooks. I picked this one because it was simple enough to make, and simple enough for me to be able to appreciate the taste of the squash, without it actually being plain.

Although it was pretty good, I would recommend feta instead of goat cheese. The goat cheese was a little too sweet on top of the already sweet butternut squash and red onions. I might also try to make some kind of sauce to go with this as the farro was kind of plain. However, I have never had farro before either, and I really liked it, so I want to try to use it more often. It is somewhat like barley, and Ken thought it tasted kind of like oatmeal.

This recipe made way more than I really needed for 2 people. Too many vegetables can't hurt though, so I would just halve the farro instead, unless you have a need for cooked farro in something else. I liked the squash, so I will definitely be trying some more butternut squash recipes in the next few weeks.

I still can't find my camera charger, but I am in the process of cleaning my house so it should find its way to me soon and I will start posting pictures again. For now I am just catching up on my posts since I am very behind...

Red Pesto Ravioli

I used my goat cheese raviolis to make the Red Pesto Ravioli from 101 Cookbooks. The red pesto is made with sun-dried tomatoes, fresh thyme, and walnuts. I have had this recipe bookmarked to make for a while, but since I was making raviolis I decided it would be a good idea to serve them this way.

This recipe was delicious. At first I wasn't sure how it would be, especially with my weird homemade raviolis, but it turned out to be so good. The bed of spinach tossed with olive oil and just a little salt was a perfect accompaniment to the sun-dried tomato pesto. I almost didn't bother with roasting the cherry tomatoes (I actually used grape tomatoes, but whatever - they were the perfect tiny size) but I am incredibly glad that I did. They were so sweet and perfect as another topping on the ravioli. I think I will definitely be using oven-roasted tomatoes more because they were just so incredibly good. I am glad to have some left over because I would love to try them in a salad, on a panini... endless possibilities.

Lucky for me, I have plenty of everything left over, including the raviolis (if they survive the night in the fridge and reheat nicely tomorrow), to make this again tomorrow. It was a really filling dinner and now that everything is already done I think it would be extremely easy to throw together. If I didn't have everything left over I obviously wouldn't make this again right away, but I will definitely return to it another time - probably with store-bought raviolis, though. Without making your own raviolis, this recipe is pretty easy and comes together in no time - just remember to get the oven going with the cherry tomatoes first. It might be really good with regular pasta, too - something curly or hollow would be great. This time, I used sun-dried tomatoes packed in oil and already seasoned, but I think they worked just fine. I might try this again with plainer sun-dried tomatoes. I'm not sure how exactly the flavor would differ, but I think it would be good.