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Mystery Food Week 19: Clown Box edition

6 Oct

My stomach and I are at war. I don’t know what I ever did to it, but it’s mad at me. Most of my delicious mystery food from last week had to go the preservation route, but I am absolutely not complaining about a freezer full of lunches. I did get around to making some delicious potato soup from the mountain of potatoes I accumulated and it’s been a lifesaver while I’m not feeling 100%. It’s also perfect for this lovely, brisk weather that has appeared out of nowhere. It’s not too heavy, but substantial enough for a meal:

Crock Pot Potato Soup

Ingredients
-12 small/medium potatoes (use the week 17 and 18 pictures for size reference.) They yielded about 6 cups diced.
-1 medium white or yellow onion, diced.
-3.5 cups of low sodium chicken stock. I like Kitchen Basics’ unsalted variety.
-3 cloves of garlic, minced.
-3 slices of bacon
-1 cup of 2% milk
-1.5 tsp. dried thyme
-A few shakes of cayenne pepper
-Salt and pepper to taste
-Green onions or chives to garnish

Method
-Peel and quarter-inch dice your potatoes. If you too are sick with the stomach flu, have a friend drag a chair and your laptop into the kitchen so that you can sit and watch bad reality television like Hell’s Kitchen while you work. If you’re preparing them in advance, put the diced potatoes in a bowl and cover with cold water. This will keep them from turning gray.
-Dice the bacon and sauté it to render out most of the fat.
-Put the potatoes, chicken stock, bacon, thyme, pepper, and some salt into the crock pot and set it on high.
-Gently sauté the onions in the left over bacon fat (you may need to add a splash of olive oil) until translucent and fragrant. Add the garlic and sauté 1-2 minutes more. Add this to the crock pot and give everything a quick stir.
-Cook on high for 4 hours.
-Ladle half of the soup into a blender and add the milk. Blend until smooth. Add the puree back to the crock pot and cook for another ½ hour on low. (It should be simmering very gently.)
-Garnish with green onions and a few grinds of black pepper. Eat merrily.

Yield: Six 1 ½ cup servings

It’s so good. I confess, however, that by the end of the weekend I was really tired of the lack of solid food in my diet. I made cookies and justified it by saying that the inclusion of ginger (digestive aid!) and blackstrap molasses (iron!) made them an appropriate snack. And they’re perfect autumn cookies, best eaten alongside a strong cup of coffee.

Giant Gingersnap Cookies

 Ingredients
-1 cup all-purpose flour
-2/3 cup sugar
-4 tbsp. unsalted butter
-1 egg
-2 tbsp. blackstrap molasses
-2 tsp. cinnamon
-1 tsp. ground ginger
-1/4 tsp. ground allspice
-1/4 tsp. baking soda
-1/4 tsp. salt
-A few grinds of black pepper (really amps up the spices)

Method
-Pre heat an oven to 350 degrees F.
-Mix the flour, cinnamon, ginger, allspice, baking soda, salt, and pepper in a bowl and set aside.
-Cream the butter and ½ cup of the sugar (reserve the rest in a small bowl) until fluffy. Add the egg and molasses and mix well.
-Slowly add the dry ingredients to the wet and mix until just combined.
-Line two baking sheets with parchment paper and drop the dough by rounded tablespoonfuls onto the baking sheets. They will spread slightly, so only put 7 cookies on each sheet.
-Spray the bottom of a glass with non-stick cooking spray, dip in the bowl of reserved sugar and then flatten a mound of dough. Repeat for each cookie.
-Bake for approximately 13 minutes or until just set. The centers will still be slightly soft, but will firm up and be crunchy once cooled.
-Cool on a wire rack and then store in a sealed container for up to a week. But they won’t last that long.

Yield: 14 big wonderful cookies

Onto this week’s Mystery Food…I called this week the clown box edition for good reason. Items just kept coming out no matter how many times I reached into the box! Fantastic.

Salad greens, Rome apples, green bell peppers, a small eggplant, squash, potatoes, and a lovely pumpkin. I found a recipe for sweet spiced pumpkin pickles so I might give that a go. If I end up canning I might also use some of those beautiful Rome apples to make apple pie filling. A quart jar of pie filling is the perfect amount for a 9-inch pie.

I hope you enjoy this week’s recipes. I’m crossing my fingers that my stomach and I can form a peace treaty so that there will be apple-picking in the near future. What better way to celebrate autumn?

Ciao for now,

Neen

Mystery Food Week 17: Pickled edition

23 Sep
Fall is here. I actually needed to throw on a cardigan this morning to go outside. For the last few months, I’ve only needed one inside because my office is frequently arctic. It must be better for the books. Or they’re secretly housing penguins on Deck C. I think I’ll keep believing that—specifically, penguins in early modern costume. Adorable.
I’ve been stockpiling at least some of the last few weeks’ worth of squash and eggplant for pickling and finally got around doing that over the weekend. After suffering from some kind of chest cold that wiped me out for two weeks, I’d accumulated a whole lot of food in the fridge. Friday night was pickle-fest, and Saturday was apple-pear butter day. Fridge clean, pantry full, life good.
Sunny Squash and Eggplant Pickles

Ingredients:
-4 cups seeded and cubed squash (I used summer, patty-pan, and zucchini) and eggplant
-1 cup sliced onion
-2 cups water
-1 cup sugar
-1 cup white vinegar
-1 tsp. plain salt (not iodized)
-1 ½ tsp. dry mustard
-½ tsp. turmeric
-½ tsp. ground ginger
-A pinch of saffron threads

Method:
-Combine all ingredients except the squash and eggplant in a large saucepan over medium-high heat and bring to a boil. Add the vegetables and return to a boil for 10 minutes.
-Using a slotted spoon, pack the vegetables into warm, sterilized jars, leaving ½ inch headspace.
-Add enough of the pickling liquid in the saucepan to cover the vegetables in each jar.
-Secure lids and rings onto jars and process in a boiling water bath for 10 minutes.

Pickled Beets and Onions

Ingredients:
-4-6 large beets (see: last week’s mystery food)
-1 large white onion, sliced
-2 ½ cups white vinegar
-1 cup sugar
-3 tbsp. pickling spice (usually in the baking aisle with other spices)

Method:
-To prepare the beets, scrub them gently and then boil for 20-40 minutes or until just tender. Rinse with cool water. Slide off the skins and quarter or halve depending on the size.
-In a large saucepan, combine the rest of the ingredients and bring the mixture to a boil over medium-high heat. Reduce the heat slightly and boil gently for 15 minutes.
-Add the beets and return the mixture to a boil.
-Using a slotted spoon, pack the beets and onions into jars leaving ½ inch headspace.
-Add enough of the pickling liquid in the saucepan to cover the vegetables in each jar.
-Secure lids and rings onto jars and process in a boiling water bath for 10 minutes.

With all of that squirreled away, there was finally space in the fridge for this week’s Mystery Food. And boy is it a good one…

Tomato, cherry tomatoes, squash, sweet corn, apples, potatoes, green peppers, and swiss chard. The cherry tomatoes are so sweet. I had some in a wrap with black forest smoked turkey and provolone cheese from the deli and it was such a delicious contrast.

Joe’s folks are away at the beach for the weekend and have absconded with our dog. Yes, that’s right, he gets a vacation from his difficult life of being spoiled. But that does mean that Joe and I can go out after work on Friday without one of us having to run home to Virginia first. And I can cook squash without a pouty face staring at me begging for some (he is weird). Cool.

Ciao for now,
Neen

Mystery Food Week 16: Purple Hands edition

16 Sep

Oh okay, they aren’t purple anymore. But they were decidedly still a tinge purply on Tuesday when I received this week’s Mystery Food. I finally got around to making grape jelly from the 3 bunches of concord grapes received in recent CSA boxes. The process was fairly easy too. Try it out sometime!

Concord Grape Jelly

Ingredients
5 cups of grape juice
3 1/2 cups of sugar
1 box of powdered pectin

Method
To make the grape juice, remove the grapes from the stems and wash them. Place the grapes in a pot and mash them up. Over medium-high heat, bring the grapes to a simmer and cook for 10 minutes, smashing them every so often.

Line a sieve with cheesecloth and place it over a large pot. Pour the hot grape mash into the sieve and strain for several hours or overnight.

Once juice has collected, rinse the cheesecloth and run the juice through the sieve into a pot one more time to remove any sediment.

To make the jam, mix the package of pectin with 1/4 cup of the sugar and sprinkle it into the grape juice. Bring this mixture to a rolling boil over medium-high heat, stirring frequently.

Once boiling, add the rest of the sugar and return to a rolling boil while mixing constantly. Let the jelly boil for 1 minute and then remove it from the heat.

Ladle into clean, warm jars and then secure the lids and rings. Process jars in a boiling water bath for 10 minutes.

Share if you must. I made half of this recipe and it yielded three half-pint jars.

Onto this week’s Mystery Food:

Zucchini, squash, tomatoes, cherry tomatoes, beets, green beans, peppers, apples and Asian pears.

The apples have been hit or miss. Some are a little bit grainy, but they’ll be good for fruit butter. I have a lot of apples and pears hanging around, so I will probably throw most of it into the crockpot this weekend with some spices and a little bit of juice. If you just let it cook on low all day, giving it a stir or a mash every few hours, it becomes a warm and tasty sauce. To reduce it for fruit butter, vent the crockpot lid with a chopstick or skewer.

As for the veggies, zucchini and tomato season is one of my favorite parts of the early fall. I love coming home and making a quick braised vegetable dish with chopped zucchini, tomatoes, onions, garlic, and then seasoning it with a little bit of cayenne pepper and saffron. It’s a fast, easy dinner and you can add whatever protein you have hanging around to make it more substantial. Light fish, like tilapia or haddock is really pleasant, as is ground turkey or bison.

I hope everyone’s fall has gotten off to a great start. It has been absolutely lovely in DC this past week.

Ciao for now,
Neen

Mystery Food Week 12 and the County Fair

19 Aug

Remember how I mentioned being inundated with peaches last week? (I know, woe is me…) Here is one of the county fair entries that came out of the bounty. All-fruit peach preserves. Nothing but peaches, lemon juice, white grape juice, and some pectin. I love the color so much.

The other entry was a peach apple cider butter. It came out with just enough spice, and the hard cider I used added a tang on the finish. Yum. Right now they’re in the gym of the Thomas Jefferson Community Center waiting for the Arlington County Fair judges to taste them.

As I said to one of my colleagues, “I am fully prepared to be schooled by somebody’s grandma.” By the time I got to the gym yesterday, there were lines of jars filled with preserves, jellies, fruits, vegetables, and honey of every color in the rainbow. It was a pretty impressive display–I won’t lie, I felt a little bit intimidated. But hey, if you don’t try, you’ll never know if you can succeed. And so I left my jars among the others and tucked the claim checks away in my wallet. Regardless of what happens, I’m really proud of the food I made and hope that the tasters enjoy it.

There weren’t many people at the fair due to a gray, drizzly sky, but I wandered around for a little bit. The food stands alone showed what a diverse place Arlington is. How many county fairs do you know of that have pad thai and stir-fry next to the deep-fried oreos and funnel cake? I hope to go back during the weekend if we get some nice weather.

Not too much else is going on here at the moment. I have a short breather and then the fall semester starts up next week. Right now I’m just enjoying having some time to bake cookies and play with the goodies from Mystery Food Week 12:

I received summer squash, peppers, an apple, a tomato, sweet corn, peaches, a cucumber, green beans, and a dill plant. A fun variety this week. I might try to poach some of the peaches in wine…

As for my own garden, I discovered a hidden treasure. The massive amounts of leaves and vines on the watermelon plant were concealing a melon that was growing in the corner! It’s about the size of a medicine ball and I never even saw it under all of the foliage. What a delicious surprise. The peppers are also still coming in full force. I see pickling in my future…

Hope you are all enjoying the waning days of summer. Be blissful.

Ciao for now,
Neen

Mystery Food Week 9: Heatwave edition

29 Jul

Another very fruit-filled box this week!

Here we have a tomato, melon, doughnut peaches, freestone peaches, green beans, and summer squash. I made a great little dish out of the tomato, green beans and squash sauteed with hot peppers, garlic, and onions. Topped a bowl of it with a slice of provolone and let it melt. One of the best vegetarian meals I’ve had in awhile. Nice and simple too for these dog days of summer.

It hit triple digits here over the weekend and of course our air conditioning decided to die. Fortunately, it was after I finished baking an assortment of 6 dozen cookies for co-workers (mine and Joe’s) because, well, who doesn’t like homemade baked good surprises? Here’s the sampler plate…I had leftover chocolate ganache in a ziploc bag and decided to do a little art project.

One knows that it must be unbearably hot outside when, aside from a lone box of Italian ice, the grocery store is entirely sold out of popsicles and sorbet. Thus was my experience on Tuesday evening. There was still an array of ice cream on the shelf, but I wasn’t really in the mood. I wanted something refreshing, cool, and fruity.Well, if you want something done you’ve got to do it yourself sometimes. I’m seriously disappointed that I couldn’t get a good picture of the final dish, because it was absolutely out of this world.

Peach-Basil Sorbet (with vanilla whipped cream and double-berry preserves)

Players
for the sorbet:
-5 to 6 ripe medium sized peaches, diced. (You can peel them if you want…I never do.)
-Handful of basil leaves, torn.
-1 tbsp. lemon juice
-3 tbsp. sucanat or sugar
-1/2 cup water
-Pinch of salt

for the cream:
-Whipping cream
-Sugar, to taste (I used about a tbsp.)
-1 tsp. vanilla extract

for the topping:
 -Blackberry/blueberry preserves

Method
–Combine the sugar, water, salt, and lemon juice in a small saucepan and slowly bring to a boil.
-Add the basil leaves and boil for 10 minutes or until slightly syrupy.
-Combine the peaches and basil syrup in a blender and process until smooth.
-Churn in an electric ice cream maker for about 20 minutes and then transfer to a freezer safe container and chill.
-Whip the cream, vanilla, and sugar until soft peaks are formed.
-To serve, place a scoop of the sorbet on a plate, top with a spoonful of preserves and a spoonful of the whipped cream. Garnish with more torn basil if desired.

It is a really wonderful summer dessert with all of those components, but that’s only if you can keep yourself from eating the sorbet straight out of the freezer. It’s a challenge.

Enjoy the week and stay cool!

Ciao for now,
-Neen

Mystery Food Week 8: Summer Ragout edition

22 Jul

Before we get down to the joy of Mystery Food, I want to express my joy and thanks to all of the family and friends-that-are-like-family in Pittsburgh who made the July Birthday Extravaganza so wonderful. I enjoyed it this much:

(Special thanks to Rendezvous for letting me make a guest appearance!)

Onto the tasty things…Mystery Food week 8 was summer in a box. It was perfect: 

I received yellow peaches, doughnut peaches, apples, summer squash, zucchini, apricots, sweet corn, and a basil plant.

Between all of the squash, fresh herbs popping up in my garden, and a can of amazing San Marzano tomatoes (thanks dad!) I started thinking, “Ragout, ragout, ragouuuuuut.”

Let’s talk about stew/ragout/ragu. Now, I know what you’re thinking: “Stew? Neen, really? It’s been in the 90s in Arlington for the last few weeks and you’re thinking about warm, fuzzy-sweater-cozy stew?” And while I’ll confess that what I’m about to present is a hot meal, I’ll argue to the end of the world that there is no better time to have it than in summer. The squash is perfectly sweet and tender, complemented by warm notes from bacon and cayenne pepper, all brought together in a sea of tomato-basil goodness. All it requires is some chopping and one pot. So without further ado, here’s…

Neen’s Summer Ragout

Characters:
-One summer squash, diced.
-One zucchini, diced.
-6 or 7 Roma tomatoes, chopped or one can of San Marzano tomatoes.
-2 ears worth of sweet corn kernels.
-2 spring onions (or one medium white/yellow onion).
-3 small cloves garlic, minced.
-1 slice thick-cut bacon.
-1-2tbsp. grape seed or olive oil.
-A few splashes of white wine (optional).
-A few strips of dried cayenne pepper, diced (or cayenne powder to taste).
-Handful of basil leaves, torn.
-5 or 6 sprigs of lemon thyme leaves.
-Kosher salt and fresh ground pepper to taste.
-Grated parmesan cheese, to garnish.

Method:
-Place the slice of bacon in the pot over medium heat until it is cooked through and the fat has rendered out.
-Remove the bacon and dice it.
-Add the onions and garlic to the pot, add a little bit of oil, and reduce the heat to medium-low.
-Cook until the aromatics are golden-brown. Add the diced bacon.
-Move the pot off of the heat and add a few splashes of wine, then return the pan to the heat and turn it up to medium.
-Add the zucchini and summer squash and sauté gently for about 7-8 minutes.
-Add the tomatoes, corn, cayenne, herbs, a few pinches of salt, and a few grinds of pepper.
-Put the lid on the pot, reduce the heat so that the ragout is simmering gently. Cook for 1 hour, giving it a stir every 15 minutes or so, and cook until the squash is soft, but not mushy. Remember to taste and adjust your  seasonings along the way!
-Garnish with a bit more basil and some parmesan cheese if you like. Voila!

I ate mine as it was, but ragout certainly goes well over pasta, brown rice, or quinoa. Ground turkey breast, browned and put into the pot when the tomatoes are added is another nice way to make a heartier meal. It also freezes/reheats nicely—always a bonus.

Finally, remember that watermelon plant that I mentioned was taking over my garden like a kudzu vine? It’s been covered in little yellow flowers with no signs of fruit. This morning, I found this:

Cutest. Watermelon. Ever.

There are four of them, each about the size of a kidney bean at the moment. Hopefully we’ll get one or two that ripen fully.

Ciao for now!

-Neen

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