Farm Box Adventure #3

Box #3?! But you just wrote about the boxes for the first time a few weeks ago?!

True. But remember, that box was box #2 already. I just didn't write about the very first box. Are you on the same page now? Good!

This Week's Bounty:

• Romaine lettuce
• Tomatoes
• Avocados
• Carrots
• Broccolis
• Green beans
• Sweet onion
• Grapefruits

What makes getting CSA box more adventurous for my household is that Brandon is a particular eater--not picky per se but specific. He can eat just about anything as long as he doesn't have to eat things he doesn't like, like fresh tomatoes, raw onion, most mushrooms, corn, and avocado.  So, when I get a box like this, I have to figure what I can do that he can also enjoy.

Yes, meal planning can be a challenge around here sometimes. But Brandon does embrace the culinary adventures we're embarking on, and is game to try something different.

For example, guacamole is out of the picture for him, but that will come in handy for me on Meatless Tuesday.  I never cook with the giant sweet onion before, but I know for sure Brandon likes French onion soup. Alton Brown actually uses sweet onion to make his version. (But it's so hot...I don't know if I'd want a bowl of gooey, melty cheesy soup!)  Brandon also said that he'd be game to try a stuffed onion. So we shall see.

There will be some interesting experiment with this box, I can tell ya!

Box #3 Meal Ideas

Caesar Salad. Glazed carrots. Steamed green beans. French onion soup or perhaps stuffed onion? Broccoli beef.

Yes, I'm cooking Asian food. Those of you who've been following along a while know that this little princess does not do much Thai or Asian food in the house.  I'm calling up my nanny/housekeeper in Thailand for her recipe. Her beef marinade is pure magic!

As for the grapefruits, we both don't care for them. I guess I'm going to make margaritas...

Report from Box #2 

We did good with the last box. Fortunately for me, I threw a barbecue for our little apartment complex and we got to grill the summer squash and made Jamie Oliver's cucumber and olive salad.

I also put some cucumber slices into a pitcher of water so I have flavored water to drink all week. And the last little bit of it went into Rachael Ray's tomato and cucumber salad a few nights ago.

The kale was a bit of a challenge. I looked up a few recipes and went with my own take of a beer-braised kale with bacon. While I couldn't stop eating the thing, Brandon didn't care for the fibrous leaves. I think I undercooked it a bit.

The cabbage, surprisingly, was the last one to go.  I used half in a pot of mixed vegetables (cabbage, carrots, baby potatoes, green beans, and green peas...again, a la Jamie's) with a side of my "ghetto aioli"--mayo, a few cloves of crushed garlic, a little squeeze of lemon, and a little drizzle of good olive oil.  I still have half a cabbage left that I finally tossed into the freezer. If I have any green beans left, I'll probably bring that out to make chicken vegetable soup adapted from a Weight Watcher recipe I got from someone's mom years ago.

But where are the pictures?

I know! I know! I promise I will start blogging the recipes soon. I'm still getting used to a new schedule I'm setting myself on. I will try to get them up as soon as I can.

And now, share your thoughts! Do you have any good stuffed onion recipe?

Pasta Carbonara Tartlets

What to bring to a baby shower potluck brunch with a vegetarian mom-to-be among the meat eating crowd?



Everyday with Rachael Ray Magazine provided an answer a couple of months back with the recipe for Spaghettini Carbonara Tartlets.

The original recipe of 1/2 lb. spaghettini (aka "Thin Spaghetti") makes about 24 tartlets. I cooked up the whole pound to double the amount. Being generous with the pasta in each cup, I made 42 tartlets.

I split half of the pasta to follow the recipe (Pancetta Tartlets) and the other half for my own vegetarian adaptation (Green Peas Tartlets).

However, I did make one double-batch of the egg mixture to save on using more bowls.

First, I very lightly salted the egg mixture for the Pancetta tartlets first. With all the pancetta, these guys really didn't need much salt. Once finished with them, I add another extra pinch of salt into the egg mixture so now we'll have the right seasoning for the Green Peas version. Easy, eh?

I also put almost a cup of parmesan in with the noodles and just topped each tartlet with a pinch more.

Pancetta Tartlets



The original recipe is made with cube pancetta. If your local market is anything like mine, I only found thinly sliced pancetta. It actually worked better for me as the thin ones cooked up super crispy, like super fine bacon. I bought 2 packs of those, rolled them up, sliced them and halved those slices, and into the pan with a little drizzle of olive oil.

And I am sure you can use your choice of bacon instead of pancetta and it'll do wonderfully as well.

Green Peas Tartlets



Instead of the hot pancetta grease to toss with the pasta, I just heated up a tablespoon or so of olive oil in a pan with a few flakes of red chilli and used that. I heated up about 1/3 of a bag of frozen green peas in the microwave, just so it's warmed through, not cooked until mushy. And I topped the tartlets with the peas instead of the pancetta.

Final results? BEAUTIFUL little nests of yummy goodness to take to a 16-people potluck brunch!

2009 Goal #2: Crunchy Fish with Noodle Toss

It has just now come to my attention that my food blog has no pictures of what I made.

Um...yeah...about that.

Well, here's the thing with me. When I cook dinner, I serve it right away. I wasn't much for presentation if it's just me and Brandon. So, I just cooked, served, ate, and I reported the result afterward. Apparently, I'm breaking a food blog rule.

I promise I'll try to do better next time! But for this recipe I made last week (and the next one I'll post which I made tonight), you'll just have to forgive me.

For those who's been reading here a while, you'll know that I don't cook fish often because Brandon doesn't care for it much. However, the only fish that gets his approval is cod. I have some in the freezer from Fresh & Easy, so one night I started to look around for a recipe.

The only recipe I could find that I have most of the ingredients on hand was Rachael Ray's Crunchy Japanese Fish with Vegetable and Noodle Toss in her 365: No Repeats cookbook.

Panko Cod and Garlic Soba Noodles - Serves 2.

Fish:
2 pieces of cod. (about a pound)
Pinches of cayenne pepper
A splash of rice wine vinegar
About a cup and a half of panko breadcrumbs
1/4 cup of butter, melted.
Salt and pepper.

Preheat oven to 400F. (Then go work on boiling your noodles.) Season the fish with salt, pepper, and cayenne. Splash the vinegar and toss. Dip fish in melted butter then coat evenly in panko. Place on non-stick cookie sheet and bake for 18-20 minutes until golden and crisp.

Noodles:
1 bundle of soba noodles. (Mine came with 4 bundles. Having cooked up 2 proves to be too much for the two of us.)
A couple TBS of vegetable or olive oil
2 garlic cloves, chopped
1 inch piece of ginger, grated (or half a TBS of minced ginger from a jar)
1 cup shredded carrots. (According to the original recipe, you can add more veggies here like bell peppers, bean sprouts, scallions, and water chestnuts.)
1/3 cup of soy sauce
A splash of Mirin

Cook noodles to al dente, drain. After the fish goes into the oven, heat the skillet. Add oil, garlic, ginger and carrots. Cook for a minute. Add drained, hot pasta. Add the soy sauce and Mirin and remove from heat. Toss the noodles around until the sauce is all soaked up. Add a little pepper here if you'd like.

Serve noodles with the fish. Ta-da!

2009 New Recipe Goal #1: Turkey Sloppy Joe's

One of my goals (NOT resolutions) this year is to cook at least one new recipe a month.

I've studied Jamie Oliver's "Jamie At Home" that Nhien got for me for my birthday. I've gone back to thumb through the Food Network Favorites my sister-in-law got for me a couple of years ago. Next up is to start sifting through my folder full of ripped-out recipes to pick some more potential.

However, last night, I craved Sloppy Joe's and found myself without any sauce on hand.

So I saught help from the Queen of Burgers and the Sloppy Joe's. Rachael doesn't disappoint me with the Turkey Sloppy Joe's recipe. I served that on ciabatta sandwich rolls.

The recipe is a little hard to get through because it is written for kids to cook. But it boils down to this: brown the meat, add the veggies, the sauce, simmer, serve. All in no time at all!

My notes on this is minimal, really. I only have yellow onion on hand and no bell pepper. I also threw in 2 cloves of garlic. As the case of may of Rachael's turkey recipe, I added more Worchestershire sauce and more grill seasoning to get the flavor right where I want it. I also added a little tobasco and apple cider vinegar for the zip and tang.

Oh, and I didn't get all the way through with the chees fries. Just the Joe's.

One down. At least 12 more to go!

Take a Leek

Actually, take four of them.

I haven't really had leeks, except for when it's blended into a potato soup. Since I found myself drooling all over the couch watching Jamie Oliver make Cheat's Pappardelle with Slow-Braised Leeks and Crispy Porcini Pangrattato, I figure I'd give it a shot.

First, the pappardelle. I even cheated the cheat by buying a pack of refrigerated Fettuccine. Heh.

Second, the braised leeks. I went to Fresh & Easy (because you know I'm obsessed) and got two packages of pre-cut leeks, total of 4 leeks minus the leafy greens. This yields 4 servings, easy. I didn't know if you'd really need all 5 with the greens.

The leeks were cleaned out quite well already. Just to be sure, I took out the outermost layer, wash them, and then chopped them. Then I employed the leek cleaning method once saw on Rachael Ray by dropping my cut-up leeks in a sink full of water so any leftover grits would sink to the bottom. And voila, my dinner was dirt-free!

On the chicken stock though, I would've gone with a little less than a pint. My sauce was, well, a bit saucier than I thought at the end without adding the pasta water. I added just a smidgen in there anyway, just in case.

About the prosciutto, I did chop them up and them back to the pan to much delight. It's delicious! But if you want to go somewhat vegetarian on this, you can probably omit adding it back in or using it altogether. Oh...but it's just soooo tasty!

Finally, the pangrattato. Brandon is not big on mushrooms. No matter how I tried to disguise it, he seems to be able to pick them out. I figured I'd leave it out altogether. And y'all know by now that I don't use rosemary. Instead, I chopped up some more thyme leaves and add it to the bread crumbs.

Oh, and for the crumbs, I used the 2 leftover cracked wheat burger buns from Fresh & Easy. One would've been enough, maybe one and a lid. Worked just fine.

Doggy Holiday

I saw a recipe for a doggy treat in Everyday with Rachael Ray a few months ago. Thinking ahead to my friends with doggies, I saved it for the holidays.

I bake quite a bit. So I figured hey if I usually have baked goods for the friends, I might as well make something for the "kids".

So today, I made Jessica Gorman’s Olive Oil and Bacon Truffles. It was simple to make and it looked quite nice for a dog treat.

All the ingredients are definitely people friendly. Of course, I love bacon so this sounds very promising. But I don't know about actually eating this though. It doesn't have any salt outside of bacon and the beef broth. So, no. I haven't tried it myself. LOL.

The one part I did different is that I kneaded the dough right in my large bowl so I didn't have to deal with cleaning a work surface. That worked out fine too. And my bake time was 30 minutes flat. The first one went for 35 and the bottom of the nuggets were bit too browned.

I rolled mine into 1-inch nuggets and I made about 60 of them.

Pork Chops w/Golden Apple Sauce

This was posted by guest contributor Celeste, a home cook. This is her only post.

Ok, I made this Sat. night and it is TASTY!!

**I dont like raisins in my food that much so I only put like 5 raisins, then picked them out**

4 Golden Delicious apples, chopped
2 teaspoons lemon juice
2 ounces golden raisins, a handful
1-inch piece fresh ginger root
3 tablespoons light brown sugar
2 cups all natural apple juice or cider, plus a splash for pan sauce
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg
2 tablespoons vegetable oil or olive oil, 2 turns of the pan
4 (1-inch) thick center cut boneless pork loin chops, 6 to 8 ounces each
Salt and pepper
2 tablespoons butter

Combine first 8 ingredients in a medium pot placed over medium high heat and cook until a chunky sauce forms, 10 to 12 minutes, stirring occasionally. If sauce begins to spatter as it bubbles, reduce heat back a little, but it should be allowed to reduce and form quickly. Once apples are soft and sauce forms, remove it from the heat.

Heat a large nonstick skillet over medium high heat. Add oil to the pan. Season chops on 1 side with salt and pepper. Using a pair of tongs, add chops to hot skillet seasoned side down. Season the opposite side of the chops with salt and pepper. Brown and caramelize the chops 2 minutes on each side, then reduce heat to medium and cook another 5 to 6 minutes, turning occasionally, until juices run clear. Remove chops from heat and let them rest a couple of minutes for juice to redistribute. Deglaze the pan with a splash of apple juice and 2 tablespoons of butter. Pour pan sauce over chops. Remove ginger from the sauce and top chops with generous portions of warm golden apple sauce.