You would have thought this week’s basket world have brought more salads, and it should have! Here’s what we ate instead.
What I Made – Week 8
Week 8
What I Got – Week 8
What I Made – Week 8
Pictures are a bit scarce this week. I was too hungry when I made the roast broccoli to snap a picture before we dug in, but believe me when I say it was delicious!
This chicken, fennel, and potato salad is like if your everyday picnic staple got all dressed up for a movie premiere. Substantial enough to be a full meal on its own, if you cook the chicken and potatoes ahead (or buy a rotisserie bird), it all comes together on a weeknight without any/much cooking, perfect for our first heatwave of the season here.
Also heatwave friendly are these bulgogi lettuce wraps. The meat is sliced thinly and cooks very quickly, so it can be grilled outside or on a grill pan inside. I usually top this with pickled radishes or other veggies, but I was trying to get this from plate to face as quickly as possible! For a lunch-friendly meal, I chop the lettuce and top with rice and meat for an easy salad.
And in the comfort food category, we have this gnocchi with bacon and escarole. I swapped sun-dried tomatoes for the fresh ones and used a large head of escarole, so it looks more like a salad than a pasta dish, but it was still delicious. With a slightly smaller bag of frozen gluten free gnocchi than what the recipe called for, this only made 3 servings instead of 4.
The cauliflower will be roasted for tonight’s Taco Friday meal, and I’ll use the squash tomorrow as noodles as planned, just in time for the next basket of veggies to fill the empty space I had started to see in the crisper!
What I’ve Planned – Week 8
The solstice this past week plus the first yellow squash of the season is a sure sign summer is definitely here!
This is what I have planned for this week:
- Buttermilk roast chicken and roasted broccoli
- Chipotle-lime cauliflower tacos
- Fennel, chicken and potato salad
- Gnocchi with bacon and escarole
- Some sort of recipe with spiralized squash, maybe these buffalo chicken meatballs with avocado ranch sauce?
- I also need to make a salad or somehow use the lettuce. I’m contemplating going with poke salad or bulgogi lettuce wraps. Or maybe both?!
What I Got – Week 8 2019
Back row, left to right: Escarole, Red Butterhead Lettuce, Fennel
Front row, left to right: Broccoli, Cheddar Cauliflower, Blueberries, Yellow Peaches, Yellow Straightneck Squash, New Red Potatoes
What I Made: Shrimp Fajitas (Sorry Grandma)
My Grandma is a faithful reader of CSA in the City, and each week when I talk to her, she lets me know which recipes looked good, and which did not. You see, Grandma is not a shrimp fan (she’s allergic, so you can’t blame her). The last few times I made a recipe with shrimp, Grandma made sure to tell me everything I posted that week looked good, except the shrimp. So with apologies to Grandma, here’s another shrimp recipe, this time with a Southwestern flair.
The shrimp marinate for a while in a mixture of lime juice, chipotle peppers and adobo sauce (buy one of the small cans at the store) and some garlic and cumin. I don’t have a grill, so I cooked them in a skillet on the stove. Then, I sliced this week’s red onion with some of last week’s green bell peppers. They got a quick toss in the leftover shrimp marinade and were sautéed until done.
Wrap them in a tortilla and eat them just like this, or top your fajitas with whatever you’d like: cheese, lettuce, salsa, etc. Continue reading
What I Made: Blueberry Buckle
My recipes seem to come with lots of lessons learned recently (see Zucchini Cake for harsh example). This week’s lesson is: don’t start a recipe before you’ve had your coffee. Your insufficiently-caffienated self might read “sugar” as “butter” and wonder why creaming shortening and butter doesn’t really work. This was made more dramatic by having already added the last egg in the house, so it was either make another run to the corner store or scoop out what appeared to be the excess and hope for the best. After clearing my head with that much needed cup of joe, I opted for the latter, removing what I hoped was around 3/4 cup of butter and replacing it with the appropriate 3/4 cup of sugar.
Mix together the wet ingredients (PLUS SUGAR), add the dry ingredients, and fold in blueberries. Then mix together the crumb topping until it is combined into a fine crumb, and spread it over the cake. It bakes up in about 45 minutes. I found it hard to test doneness with a toothpick, because I always hit a blueberry. So much for the toothpick “coming out clean”; it always came out purple! After a few tries, you may have to trust your baking instincts.
The buckle turned out fine, even if it didn’t buckle, and made a nice breakfast treat with last week’s blueberries.
In addition to items that can stand on their own as snacks or simple sides, these mid-summer items also store better for longer periods. You’ll notice in the next few weeks that I’m still using ingredients from previous week’s baskets. It’s also because I can’t eat it all fast enough to keep up!
What I Made: Corn and Poblano Lasagna
My awesome cousin Anna heard my pleas for more zucchini recipes and sent along a whole bunch! As I’ve mentioned, I love trying recipes that use more than one of my weekly ingredients, so of course this was the first recipe I tried.
This is a lasagna where the layers are a pureed mix of sautéed corn and cream, no-boil lasagna noodles, and a mix of onions, zucchini and poblano peppers, all topped with Oaxaca cheese. My neighborhood grocery store carries Oaxaca cheese, but if you can’t find it, the recipe suggest substituting mozzarella.
The original recipe says to use an 11×8 baking dish. Naturally, I only had a 11×7 or a 9×13. I sized up, but in hindsight, I should have sized down. The bigger dish meant that the veggies didn’t fully cover the noodles, so they didn’t get soft on the top layer.
You can see from this photo that I didn’t have enough veggies to cover the top, so the noodles got a little crispy. Nothing some time in the fridge as leftovers won’t fix! However, this meant that I avoided broiling the lasagna to crisp the cheese, since I didn’t want to burn the exposed noodles.
What I Made: Summer Veggie Quiche
Quiche is one of my favorite things to make. The technique is always easy, the results are always good, and it makes for great leftovers for brunch or for an actual meal! This recipe is even better, because it combines 3 of the items from my basket this week: zucchini, tomatoes, and onions. Read on for the recipe.
Chop up the zucchini, tomatoes, and onion and add to a greased pie dish or casserole. I recommend the latter, since this will be a FULL pie dish. I used half peeled zucchini and half not because of what I had on hand, but it’s up to you. Sprinkle over the top with parmesan cheese.
Buzz baking mix, milk, eggs, and pepper in a blender for about 15 seconds. I used this as my opportunity to break out my unused stick blender, and it worked great! Pour this over the veggies.
Bake in a 400 F over for 30 minutes, or until an inserted knife comes out clean.
I couldn’t even wait to take a photo before I ate a slice!
What I Made: Scallopini alla sorentina
I have the best intentions for recipes I bookmark, but inevitably, some excuse comes up as to why I can’t make them: I don’t have the right ingredients, or it’s too hot to run the oven for that long, or I don’t have enough time. (Similar excuses seem to arise when thinking about going to the gym, but I’ll leave that topic aside.) I got scared off by the time-intensive prep work involved in this recipe from Lidia’s Italy, even after I bought all of the ingredients! The technique was simple, but a 50 minute wait for the eggplant to be ready is too long for my hungry self after work! I started searching for a similar but simpler recipe, and came across this one from Saveur. I decided to combine them into a Franken-recipe, using chicken instead of veal and combining the simpler eggplant prep from Saveur with the more detailed sauce from Lidia’s.
The breaded eggplant technique.
The more complicated homemade sauce.
Ready to east after baking to melt the cheese and thicken the sauce.
The results were good, and I’ve been enjoying the leftovers all week!
CSA in the Suburbs 