CSA
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Wednesday, August 1st, 2012
Alrighty, we are back to CSA season (Community Supported Agriculture Weekly Food Box). CSA involves creative cooking is at its best. What is that show again where they are only given certain ingredients and they have to make something delicious? Having a CSA a box has been our chance at our own version of ‘Chopped.’
If you want to learn how to cook, sign-up for a CSA weekly food box and get to work!
John’s been the main cook lately. He had string beans and arugula to work with. So he found this salad recipe that only had a few ingredients and it was a great weeknight summer meal for two. Add some crusty sourdough to make it a meal.
Grilled String Bean Salad with Arugula & Lemon Recipe
- 1/2 – 3/4 lbs. String Beans (yellow or green), trim each end off but keep beans long
- 3 tablespoons olive oil
- 2 cloves garlic, minced
- 2-3 large hand-fulls of arugula, trimmed
- 1-1 1/2 teaspoon finely grated lemon zest
- Salt and freshly ground black pepper
Toss the beans with the olive oil and garlic. Let them sit for a bit and then wrap all of them in a square of tin-foil, for grilling. Warm the grill up while you are letting the beans sit for 10 or so minutes. Then grill the beans in the aluminum foil pack for 15-25 minutes – be sure not to char or burn them too much, a little tastes good to me. Let the beans cool a bit. Combine the beans with the rest of the ingredients (arugula, salt/pepper, lemon zest). Serve!
* I’ve read you can use your oven if you don’t have a grill – (425F for 30 mins).
Posted in Home Cookin', Salad | No Comments »
Tags: Arugula, CSA, Home Cookin', Salad, String Beans
Monday, July 26th, 2010
What to do when you have accumulated 3-6 bunches of carrots? Make carrot soup with orange juice and zest. This is a recipe I got from a family Chef and it is really clean and healthy. We stirred in a bunch of dill and a spoonful of sour cream instead of cilantro to garnish. Have you ever had fresh squeezed carrot, orange, and ginger juice? OK, next time let’s try this with ginger as an addition.
Carrot Soup Recipe
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Posted in CSA Food Box Recipes, Soup | 1 Response »
Tags: Carrot, CSA, Home Cookin', recipe, Soup, Vegetarian
Wednesday, July 21st, 2010
This is a Bon Appetit recipe from this months magazine. It is a really healthy dish and makes a nice left over lunch. The healthy, veggie, yogi types will tell you that this is their type of food! Look at their bodies, trust them!
CSA Food Box Ingredients Used:
Curried Red Lentil, Kohlrabi, and Couscous Salad Recipe
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Posted in CSA Food Box Recipes, Main Dishes | No Comments »
Tags: Couscous, CSA, Home Cookin', Kohlrabi, lentils, recipe, Vegetarian
Tuesday, July 20th, 2010
This salad recipe is a restaurant recreation based on a salad that I had at Big Sur Bakery and Restaurant in June. It was awesome! This is definitely one of my favorite recipes of the summer, so far. I looked in the Big Sur Bakery Cookbook and realized that the peach and mache salad was based on the Field Greens Salad with Pecans, Croutons, and Ranch Dressing recipe + garlic in the dressing, peaches in the salad, and Feta cheese but no croutons.
Peach, Feta, & Mache Salad with Creamy Garlic (Ranch) Dressing
Serves 10
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Posted in CSA Food Box Recipes, Home Cookin', Salad | No Comments »
Tags: CSA, CSA Box, homemade mayonnaise, mache, peaches, ranch dressing, Recipes, Salad, Vegetarian
Saturday, July 3rd, 2010
We get greens every single week. So this week, it was time to find another creative way to ingest more greens. I googled, “Creative Kale Recipe” and an interesting one came up from a blog that tried to recreate a dish from M Cafe in Beverly Hills. Folks started commenting on the blog post that they love this signature dish from M Cafe. So I then looked for the actual recipe and found a video online about how to make it as well as the restaurant recipe from M Cafe. This is a very interesting, delicious, and unique greens recipe!
CSA Food Box Ingredient: Red Russian Kale or just Kale
Kale with Spicy Peanut Dressing Recipe from M Cafe
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Posted in CSA Food Box Recipes, Greens, Home Cookin', Vegetable Side Dish | 4 Comments »
Tags: CSA, Greens, Home Cookin', Kale, Peanut Sauce, Recipes, Side Dish, Vegetarian
Thursday, July 1st, 2010
The Big Sur Bakery makes the greatest salads. We finally were able to eat at the BSB for dinner last week. It was wonderful. I will write more later about that. This dressing can dress up any salad ingredients, grilled veggies, or pasta salads to add California touch to your meal.
Meyer Lemon Vinaigrette Recipe from the Big Sur Bakery Cookbook
- 1/2 cup freshly squeezed orange juice
- 2 tablespoons golden (or white) balsamic vinegar
- 1 1/2 teaspoons Dijon mustard
- 3/4 teaspoon kosher salt
- 2 tablespoons freshly squeezed Meyer lemon juice
- Grated zest of 1 Meyer lemon
- 3/4 cup rice bran oil or canola oil
Pour the orange juice into a small saucepan and reduce it over medium-high heat until syrupy, 5 to 7 minutes – you should be left with about 1 tablespoon. Put the reduced orange juice, vinegar, mustard, salt, lemon juice, and lemon zest into a blender. With the blender running, add the oil in a slow, steady stream, blending until the dressing is thick and emulsified. Transfer the dressing to a plastic container or glass jar and refrigerate until ready to use.
Makes 1 cup
* I didn’t have an orange so I grabbed some frozen orange concentrate out of the freezer and used a few tablespoons of that to create the orange juice reduction.
Posted in CSA Food Box Recipes, Fruits, Home Cookin', Salad | No Comments »
Tags: CSA, Meyer Lemon, Salad Dressing, Vegetarian, Vinaigrette
Wednesday, June 30th, 2010
I am getting better and better at creatively throwing together the ingredients that I randomly have in my refrigerator with the last of my CSA food box veggies. Sometimes the concoctions are somewhat edible and sometimes there is a tasty recipe that comes out of googling various ingredients in order to compile a worthwhile creation to share! And yes, I am behind on the CSA food box weeks but I am still keeping the week numbers in sequence to make myself feel better. This is a great summer salad and I actually made a Meyer Lemon Vinaigrette Recipe from the Big Sur Bakery Cookbook instead of the dressing with this Serious Eats Recipe below. I will list the Meyer Lemon Dressing recipe in the next post. It is a total California recipe and it adds additional uniqueness locally grown goods to this salad.
CSA Food Box Ingredients:
Beet, Avocado, and Goat Cheese Salad Recipe Click to continue »
Posted in CSA Food Box Recipes, Salad | No Comments »
Tags: Arugula, Avocado, Beets, CSA, Goat Cheese, Home Cookin', recipe, Salad, Vegetarian
Saturday, June 12th, 2010
OK, it must have taken us until this week to finally understand Fava Beans (i.e. shell them the proper way) and to find a recipe that makes them taste good. This is the best Fava Bean Recipe that we have found so far!
Thanks to Martha Stewart I figured out that you need to do an initial de-podding of the Fava Beans. Then you need to boil them. Then after boiling the Fava’s you need to blanch them in cold water for a few minutes. After blanching the Fava’s you have to then peel them from their exterior shell to find a smaller greenish bean. Then they are ready to work with!
Egyptian Fava Bean Dip (Foul Mudammes) Recipe
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Posted in Appetizers, CSA Food Box Recipes, Home Cookin' | 3 Comments »
Tags: CSA, Fava Bean, Home Cookin', recipe, Vegetarian
