CSA Wrapup - Kasuzuke Pompano

So between finals and a visit from the Sisters In Law I've been busy. But here's a couple things that became of the last of our CSA veggies. Or were just tasty.

The corn was grilled, along with some Poblano Sausages, bell peppers, poblanos, and spring onions. Topped with cherry tomatoes and cilantro. Corn was served with some roasted garlic compound butter. Served in some leftover whole wheat pitas. Good but not great, the spring onions were still a bit gritty. :(

We had a big Japanese dinner when the sisters were in town. Unfortunately no really good photos but here's the spread. On the left are some amazing quick pickles, using CSA cucumber and neon red cabbage. They are great sides, and only take a couple hours! On the top is some of the last of our bok choi, steamed and dressed with garlic oil and soy sauce. Bottom is a large plate of rice with kokumotsu. It's a collection of other grains and seeds used to spice up plain ol' rice. Here we used 10 koku, which has, duh, 10 various grains and seeds. You can get packets of it at Lucky Mart. To cook you just throw it in the rice cooker along with the rice.

The real star of the meal was Kasuzuke Pompano on the right there. Three pompano fillets went into a marinade based around sake kazu for two days. Kasu is the lees leftover from making sake, the spent rice goo that is pressed at the end. It has a really cool taste, like yeasty sake. Youhei brought some back from Japan on his last trip, but you might be able to find it around if you looked hard enough. It's used as a popular marinade for fish, and works well with salmon and black cod, neither of which are local enough for our tastes here in Miami. So we tried pompano, and it was GREAT! Sweet, sake-ey, a bit salty, great texture on the fish. The broiled sweet crispy skin is the best part! Served with an amazing dai-ginjo sake.

The recipe was from Tom Douglas' Seattle Kitchen, and is basically the recipe that Uwajimaya uses for their awesome Black Cod Kasuzuke. Which is:

Black Cod/Salmon Kasuzuke

4 (6 oz.) slices of fish fillet (Choose from: Black Cod, Salmon, Snapper, or Chilean Sea Bass)

Marinade:

• 1/2 cup Kasuzuke (Sake Kasu, a by-product of the Sake making process)
• 2 Tablespoon sake
• 3 Tablespoon mirin, sweet cooking rice wine
• 1/4 cup of water
• 3 Tablespoon brown sugar
• 2 Tablespoon miso (optional)

Preparation:

Salt fish, refrigerate overnight, and wipe dry. Prepare marinade, add water as needed to make a paste. Coat fish with marinade, cover, refrigerate 3 days (or may be frozen at this point). Scrape off marinade & broil both sides until nicely browned (approximately 4-5 minutes each side). Save marinade to use again.

You can save the marinade and use again a few times. I'm going to try snapper sometime soon I think.

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CSA WEEK 20 - Final Week

It's the final week for the season and perhaps time for some reflection.

First up, this week's newsletter had a link to the blog, so hopefully some more CSA members will check it out. I feel that I should perhaps apologize for not sending in a link earlier. Honestly, it's a case of stupid forgetfulness. It seemed that I always thought about emailing the CSA at 10 PM on a Friday, or on my way to pick up the box on Saturday... Then *poof* - right out of my mind. So I'm sorry for that. Hopefully next season people will look back on this year for ideas and inspiration.

To that end I'm going to go back and re-tag all the Redland Organics posts (currently tagged as 'local/organic' and 'recipe') as 'South Florida CSA'. That way a single click will bring them all up. I am also planning on going through them soon and posting a 'Best Of' of my favorite things we've cooked up over the season.

The other reason for relabeling the posts is that we will not be renewing our CSA membership. This has nothing to do with the experience, costs, or quality of the produce provided by Redland Organics. In fact the CSA is by far one of the most worthwhile experiences we have had during our time in Florida. My thanks go out to whole Redland Organics crew, the interns, volunteers and associated farms for making this all work and providing this wonderful opportunity.

But the fact is we will both be graduating soon. I have registered to take the Washington State Bar Exam, and we'll be moving back to Seattle in a few weeks' time. We hope to either sign up for a new CSA there, or at least make frequent trips to the various farmers' markets, so the CSA posts will hopefully continue, just with very different ingredients and growing season... We also hope to get some chickens and maybe pygmy goats!

So without further ado, here's Week 20:

Pretty big haul this week.

• Red Potatoes
• Green Onions
• Two Cucumbers
• A Turnip
• Cilantro
• Celery
• Lettuce
• A GBP
• Honey
• Two ears of corn
  
• And some Caimitos (Star Apples)
  

We had a party last night so I was hoping to put a dent in things. Didn't work out as planned. So tonight I'm going to grill up the corn with some roasted garlic compound butter. I love grilled corn! We'll grill the rest of last week's spring onions, the GBP, and a red poblano from the yard and make sortof grilled southwest veggie Rajas. I threw some of my Roasted Poblano Sausages on the smoker yesterday, so I'll just heat them up on the grill too. That's tonight's dinner. Maybe served in a grilled pita?

I see some serious salads in our near future. And I'm thinking something with the turnip and potatoes. Maybe a gratin? Maybe the fritter recipe? We've got the red cabbage still, maybe Goat Stew Mk. II?

Probably just eat the caimitos straight up. Never had them before, don't know what to expect.

LAST WEEK'S ROUNDUP

Went out to the store to see what I could score post-Easter, came back seriously disappointed and empty handed. So the big meals of last week were a Braised Veal Breast with a Gratin of White Beet. I cut, peeled and mandolined half of Turnipus, then boiled the beet slices in milk for about 10 minutes, then into a pan with some Parmesan grated over the top. Into the oven where the veal breast was already braising in a mix of pinot noir, mirepoix, tomato paste, beef stock and demi-glace de veau. The breast came out like a good pot roast. Not what I was looking for, but still reasonably tasty. And it made three meals. The gratin was good but not great, too much liquid was released from the beets and it could have used some sour cream or more cheese or something to give it body. The beet was actually pretty good though. Which gave me hope for the next dish of the week:

Beef And Veal Stew With Whatever Veggies I Had Around At The Time. I didn't actually measure a single thing for this recipe, just shot from the hip. I took the mangled veal chunks from my earlier attempt at deboning the breast, as well as some very frozen stew beef I had, dredged in flour, salt and pepper. Chopped some guanciale into batons and fried them up. Used the oil from that to brown the beef well, then removed. Into the pot went:

• The other half of Turnipus, peeled and chopped
• Some big spring onions and two leeks I had. Chopped, then washed really well in a big bowl of water. Leeks are a pain that way.
  
• A random red potato, chopped
• And a good handful of green beans, top and tailed and chopped in thirds.

After these sweated for a while I deglazed with half a bottle of Stone Smoked Porter. (The other half went to the cook!) Then I added the meat back in, and added the leftover braising sauce from the Braised Veal Breast earlier in the week.

The two final ingredients are definitely serious secrets for awesome beef stew. The first is pickled green peppercorns. You can find them in a jar next to the capers. I use about half a tablespoon to a tablespoon, loosely chopped. They have a pepper taste to them, but also this weird pickled sourness that really helps perk up the flavors in a stew like this.

The second is our old friend Trotter Gear. I scooped a good maybe half cup into the stew to give it some "unctuous potential".

This put the waterline at about the right level, so I brought it up to a simmer, where it would stay for about two hours. The first night we just ate the stew straight, the second I put it in a pie dish and covered it with a spare pie crust we had and baked it till golden brown and delicious. Really, really delicious.

• Baba Ghanoush and Roasted Garlic Tzatziki

Yesterday I had some people coming over and the smoker was going, so I figured what the heck and put last week's eggplant on the smoke for two hours. Usually I directly grill it until soft all over, and the smoke time wasn't enough. It had to go into the oven for a bit before we could make baba ghanoush with it. Still good though!

Since we got two more cucumbers and I hadn't used last week's yet, I decided to make another round of tzatziki too. Only this time instead of labneh I used our own homemade yogurt. Put it into a doubled over cheesecloth and hung it from the faucet over the sink for a few hours. Also, I'd roasted a head of garlic for no particular reason (other than to make the house smell great!) so I put a clove or two of that in with the cucumber and some dill. Pretty decent over all, but my yogurt isn't as good as good labneh... Not sure I like roasted garlic over raw in my tzatziki either.

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CSA Week 19

Only one more week! Here's this week:

• Kale
• Lots of Spring Onions
• An Eggplant
• A GBP
• Some Green Beans
• A big Red Cabbage
• A Cucumber
• A small bouquet of Italian Parsley
• Strawberries

Plan for this week:

The first plan is to run out to the store today and see what's for sale cheap after Easter. Ducks? Lamb? The results may change the plans somewhat. Here's how it stands right now though.

• Roast Veal Breast with Beet

I picked up two veal breasts on wicked sale (buy one get one). I set out to debone them today, with the intention of making a braised veal roulade stuffed with some of the Italian sausage I made last week and some matzos that a friend left over here (bleh, matzos. But waste not want not...) The remaining bones would make some veal stock. Unfortunately I soon discovered that:

1. I'd put them in the freezer and I didn't defrost them all the way first. This led to the knife digging a little too much into the meat.
   
2. My boning knife is a 7" Opinel fillet folder that I keep monstrously sharp. It actually cut straight through some of the fairly cartilaginous veal bones...d'oh!
3. A (presumably well-meaning) butcher had slashed huge gashes across the breast, effectively destroying any chance of stuffing it.

In short I butchered the butchery.

So I trimmed the remaining breast and left it at that. Tonight it will be braised with about half the giant white beet (roasted separately?) in some wine, beef stock, rosemary and demiglace. Half the green beans will probably be a side, with whatever herbs I can scrounge. The bones of the one mauled breast went in a bag, and the chopped meat in another. Which leads to the next meal of the week:

• Beef and Trotter Gear Pot Pie

Meredith and I were talking about a restaurant we used to go to, a cute neighborhood place in Seattle called Pies and Pints. You would walk in on a cold rainy day, and order a beer and a pie-float: one of several different crusty mini-meat pies set in the middle of a bowl of pea soup. Cheap and awesome.

So I've got a spare pie crust, my hacked up veal and some very frozen stew beef, half a giant beet, some red potatoes, leeks, green beans, spring onions, and assorted herbs. Beef pie time. Also still have some trotter gear and guanciale, so I'm thinking it's time to try out this recipe. No peas for split pea soup though. Might pick some up...

• Red Cabbage

It'll keep. I'd like to make sauerkraut but I don't think I have time. Grilled? Maybe a coleslaw, or cooked up with some of the ridiculous amount of sausages I have in the freezer.

• Eggplant

Who knows. Baba Ghanoush again? Nom nom nom.

LAST WEEK

• Pizza
  

As posted earlier last week there was Gardenpocalypse. I ended up with about 6 big red tomatoes and RBPs that had to be eaten soon. So I made pizza! Using everything I could get my hands on...

The dough was a simple pizza dough. Only difference was that I had some dried Chantrelle mushrooms around that I rehydrated. I used the mushroom-rehydration water in the dough, which was pretty tasty.

Pizza sauce is easy. Took two big tomatoes, chopped, cooked in a tablespoon or two of olive oil with a clove of garlic and a dash of salt, pepper and oregano for about 45 minutes until it was sauce.

On the left is a veggie pizza, with yellow squash, fresh basil, Chantrelle mushrooms, fresh tomatoes, garlic and fresh mozzarella. Very good. The squash was better than I expected.

On the right is the meat pizza. There was fresh hot Italian sausage, dry Spanish/Miami chorizo, red bell pepper, red onion, garlic, and fresh mozzarella. Amazing.

• Hot Italian Sausage and Poblano Sausage

I had all these RBPs and Poblanos around, so I picked up some pork and made 10 lbs of sausage. Both recipes were basically the ones out of Charcuterie, but I tweaked them a bit. I added roasted red bell peppers to the hot Italian sausage (lessening the liquid amount) and I used homemade chili powder and some vinegar and tequila in the Poblano sausages. Both were good, but the Italian is really great.

• Moroccan

Saturday we had 14 people for a Moroccan dinner that Meredith had donated for an auction a while back. Sadly we were too busy cooking (all...day...) to take photos. But we used a lot of the CSA veggies. Often I see food blogs with lots of studio quality photos of every step and I'm like: seriously? Wtf. How did you possibly have time for that. Do you have a prehensile tail? A well trained dog or kitchen gnome who waits patiently to snap photos for you? Anyway, here's the courses:

1. Bisteya - an awesome 13"x9" chicken, egg, almond, cinnamon and sugar phyllo-dough pie.
2. The Lemon and Olive course. A chicken tagine with kalamata olives and preserved lemons. Side was an herb salad of beet tops, carrot tops, Italian parsley, kale, cilantro, kalamatas, garlic, olive oil and lemon juice, steamed and then cooked to death (and deliciousness). Served with a dollop of Harissa.
   
3. Lamb and Veggie Couscous. A big couscous with lamb, CSA zucchini, yellow squash, and carrots, and chickpeas. Topped with fried almonds and spiced caramelized onions and raisins. Served with a harissa sauce made with the lamb stock. Here's the couscous steaming on the couscousiere. The idea is that you make a stew in the bottom and use the steam to cook the couscous just right. It just barely fits on the stove. I got it at Daily Bread for about $30...it is huge and makes a minimum of couscous for 6, but I have no doubt it would easily do couscous for 30.
4. Harissa. Not really a 'course', but I needed to use a bunch of ripe chiles. So I took about 20 red ripe serranos and jalapenos from the yard, halved and seeded them, and steamed them for about 5 minutes. (You could also use rehydrated dried chiles). Into the cuisinart they went with a roasted red bell pepper, a clove of garlic, and about 2 t each of caraway and coriander (toasted). Blitz to paste. Adjust with salt and pepper, then strain through a sieve to get a fiery hot neon orange paste. It'll keep a little while. You can use it like you'd use any garlic/chile paste (like Sambal Oelek).
   

Dinner was a raging success. People were pretty cool with sitting on pillows and eating with their fingers. It was a frightening amount of work, but everything was cooked perfectly and there were hardly any leftovers.

Now let us never speak of it again.

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CSA Week 18

Only two more weeks left!

• Spring Onions
• Italian Parsley
• Carrots w/ Tops
• Three Yellow Squashes
• One GBP
• Grape Tomatoes
  
• And a massive White Beet that I am henceforth naming Turnipus

From the extras bin: one big zucchini, one wilted head of Romaine, some wilty dill.

Also into this week's calculations go the facts that we're going to be making some yogurt this week, and it seems that everything is ripening in the garden at once. We have about two dozen ripe red serrano chiles, some pasillas, about six RBPs, two huge flowering bok choi, and soon we'll have about eight ripe huge heirloom tomatoes. Plus the mint patches, basil, rosemary, chives, and cilantro are all doing well.

Turnipus is a beast, weighing in at 3lbs 4oz with tops. Also, the only thing I have ever used beets for is raining some root-vegetable doom down on the doomed heads of my doomed enemies in Super Mario Brothers 2. Oh 1988...salad days indeed.

Suffice to say Beets are not really my forte. I hate the pickled ones in a can. Roasted they're ok I guess. But there's no chance of roasting it like smaller red beets, it's enormous (could probably chunk it though). I'm thinking it could be soup, or some kind of gratin, mash or pancake?

My first thoughts for this week are use yogurt and use herbs. I'm thinking we'll go Greek and Indian this week. Maybe some grilled lamb and squashes, with dilled yogurt on the side. We've got a lot of parsley, maybe a quinoa taboule? I'm thinking the carrots would go well in a cold curry-yogurt sauce. Chicken Tikka?

Or I'm thinking this Moroccan Vegetable Stew with Harissa Yogurt would solve all of my problems at once: carrots, turnip, green onions, parsley, yogurt, chiles! Only problem is there is a large chance that we will be cooking a multi-course Moroccan feast for eight next Saturday, can there be too much of a good thing?

Last Week Roundup

We had a leftover/garden night with Chinese Stuffed Red Bell Peppers and Steamed Bok Choi. I took two ripe RBPs from the garden, cut the tops off about half an inch down and removed the seeds and veins. Into a saute pan went some oil, onion, ginger, garlic, two small diced lop chong sausages, diced carrot, green onions. Sauted all that till done, then mixed it with an egg and some leftover rice. Stuffed RBPs. Placed tops back on, stood them upright in a pan, poured a couple T's of the daikon dipping sauce from earlier in the week around them and some Shaoxing Rice Wine. Threw a lid on and into the oven at 350 for 20 minutes or so.

Meanwhile, I made a bok choi recipe based on one from Tom Douglas' Tom's Big Dinners. One of the big flowering bok choi from the garden was cleaned and chopped into 4" lengths. Into the bottom of the wok went about 3 cups of water, four coins of ginger, and half one of the oranges from that week. On went the bamboo steamer, in went the bok choi, steamed for about 12 minutes. Meanwhile, fried some garlic chips in some veggie and sesame oil. This went on the bok choi along with a tablespoon of the daikon dipping sauce.

Once the peppers were ready, I took them out, put them on plates. Put the pan back on the stove and added a teaspoon of cornstarch to the soy/ricewine/pepper drippings in the bottom of the pan and made a tasty sauce for the peppers.

All in all not an outstanding meal but a good use of stuff we had leftover and around. The bok choi was good but not as ginger/orangy as I'd hoped.

• Caesar Salad with Dandelion Greens

We had the head of romaine and the dandelion greens left, and the last two rice-batards were going stale. So I made a Caesar salad with it all.

Diced the bread, rolled it around in a couple cloves of chopped garlic, chopped rosemary, and a little olive oil. Baked at 350 till golden crispy.

Made the dressing. Here's the recipe I use for two people, based on one that feeds six from Mark Miller's Coyote Cafe.

• 1/3 Cup Olive Oil
• 2 cloves garlic
• 2-3 anchovies
• 1 t Dijon
• 2 t lemon juice (or less if you prefer)
• 2 t sherry vinegar
• black pepper to taste
• an egg yolk
  

Blitz the oil and garlic in a Cuisinart. Strain into your salad bowl, pressing garlic to get maximum goodness. Mince the anchovies, in they go with the Dijon, lemon juice and vinegar. Add black pepper to taste. Right before serving whisk in the egg yolk.

A note about Food Safety. Yes it's a raw egg yolk. No you won't die. The CDC says about 30-40 people die a year from salmonella, mostly the young or elderly. In 2006, 46 people were killed by lightening. In 2005, 20,000 people died from accidental falls. You're more likely to die from slipping and falling on a broken egg. Does this mean you should lick that raw chicken cutting board you've left festering in the sink for a couple days? No. But a raw egg yolk once in a while won't kill you. Particularly when it's in a vinegar solution like this dressing.

I'm no more happy with the current state of U.S. factory chicken production than you are (or should be). And I'm skeptical about the cleanliness and safety of any of it. Buy local, buy organic, and know where your food comes from. For an eye opening look, you can check out Michael Pollan and others, but for a really in your face statement of the problem check out Jamie Oliver's Fowl Dinners (here's the first episode. Warning, many dead chickens.) Brutal but it's the truth, and it needs to be told, which is why this series cemented Jamie's place as one of my Food Heroes.

A raw egg now and then in your salad, egg nog, or cookie dough won't kill you. Still, no meal is appetizing if you spend the dinner worrying. So if you're still freaked by the idea, you can either coddle the egg first, or use a pasteurized egg. Or omit the egg altogether. Same goes for the anchovies. (But you really should leave them in, otherwise it's not really a Caesar!)

Ok, sorry for the food safety rant...back to the recipe.

Washed and chopped the lettuce and dandelion greens. Into the salad bowl with the croutons, and about a quarter cup grated Parmesan cheese. Mixed around, top with some more Parmesan and cracked black pepper. Delicious.

• Bucatini All'amatriciana

By the end of the week I'd pretty much cleaned out our veggies (yay!) so I made this recipe using a big heirloom tomato from out back and some of the guanciale I've still got. It was very good, and very easy.

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CSA Week 17: Crispy Daikon Cake / Turnip Stalks with Black Bean Sauce

So I didn't use all my daikon yesterday. The bulk went into tonight's dinner:

• Golden Crisp Daikon Cake with Spicy Herb Soy Sauce

Yesterday I began this recipe from Epicurious for Golden Crisp Daikon Cake. The results are there up in the top of the photo, though I only cooked about half the daikon cake. The little crunchy/squishy/sweet daikon pieces were really tasty. The dipping sauce is next to it, it was also very good. A nice salty to the cake's sweet.

Some advice:

1) My bamboo strainer wouldn't fit with my cake pan under the wok's lid, so I used a ramekin. Worked fine. Here's a photo of the cake just about to be steamed in the wok.

2) It says steam until "firm to the touch". But you'll find it's still a bit moist and squishy, on account of being glutinous and in a steamer. It sets up more when it cools.

3) It says to fry for about 5 minutes a side, but has you cut the cake into little batons. I interpreted that as fry each of the four sides...not just two like in the photo. They got a bit more Golden Crisp than they should have been... Still tasty though.

4) Don't skip the lop chong, it gives it a certain somethin somethin that can't be replicated. Unless you're vegetarian or something, then add a bit of five spice. The sausage is easy to find at Asian markets, they're small and red, and usually labeled Sweet Pork Sausage. Also don't skip the dried shrimp. (But you probably could and no one would notice.)

5) I substituted the Spring Onion we got this week for the green onions. Worked great.

Also, if you did skip the sausage and shrimp this would be an awesome vegan use of daikon, if that's more your thing.

• Turnip Stalks, Hakurei Turnips, Mizuna, and Summer Squash with Black Bean Garlic Sauce

So I saved all the stalks from the daikons and from the Hakurei turnips, broke them into 3 inch lengths, washed the bejesus out of them, and stirfried them with the Hakurei turnips, the last of my wilting mizuna, last summer squash, some dried shitakes, a bit of garlic, thai basil, and ginger, and a bottle of Black Bean Garlic Sauce. Serious umami-bomb but still really good. Would be better over rice, but didn't make any due to the daikon cake. Plenty of leftovers for that though.

Finally the leftover Kalbi Spareribs were finished off too.

• Field Trip: Lucky Mart

These recipes all necessitated a run to Lucky Mart to get various odd Asian sundries. We do a major run about every two or three months to stock up. I always try to pick up some good snacks while I'm at it.

This time it was Jackfruit Chips, and they were excellent. The bag's from Vietnam, and it's basically jackfruit hulls that are fried. That's it. Crunchy and tastes just like jackfruit. They'd be awesome in trail mix. We ate about half the bag on the way home. (Not recommended, major dried fruit stomach expansion.) There didn't appear to be any preservatives in them, which was confirmed by this excellent Engrish endorsement.


I'm not sure exactly what the chemical substance is, but I too am glad it was not used in the process of production.

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CSA Week 17

Here's this week! Only three weeks left, down to the home stretch.

• Red Potatoes
• Daikons with Tops (3)
• Bok Choi
• Romaine Heart
• Dandelion Greens
• Spring Onion
• Valencia Oranges (3)
• Strawberries
  

Wow more daikon. Also my Bok Choi here are all so big they're starting to flower, so bok choi was certainly on the menu this weekend. And then I got another one! :)

Thinking the daikon tops, dandelion greens and one of my bok choi will be stirfried with some Black Bean Garlic sauce.

Potatoes will keep. Strawberries are dessert. Daikons were all dealt with today.

Here's how!

Leftover Wrapup and The Week So Far

• Korean Spareribs; Daikon Slaw with Szechuan Peppercorns and Red Chile; Grilled Kimchi Bok Choi

So for tonight's dinner I finally got around to my Korean Spareribs. Picked up about two pounds worth of "Flanken" cut beef ribs. Thinner would have been better, these were pretty thick. But hey, what're you gonna do. Marinade was:

• 1/2 Cup Soy Sauce
• 1/4 Cup Mirin
• 1/4 Cup Brown Sugar
• 1/8 Cup Rice Vinegar
• 1/8 Cup Sesame Oil
• 1/8 Cup chopped garlic
• a couple tablespoons of chopped chives because I didn't have any green onions around

Left it overnight. The next day, onto the grill until delicious. (And they were delicious!)

The Daikon Slaw was basically this recipe from Epicurious. It was good, but nothing to write home about. I would have liked more szechuan peppercorns. Also I grated the daikon, in the future I would recommend a julienne.

Finally, in my book there is no better way to cook bok choi than by grilling it. So I split the head, washed it out, and placed it in a baking dish. I took my remaining half-jar of daikon and bok choi kimchi from last week and blitzed it in the miniprep with a couple T's of sesame oil. Pour over the bok choi halves and work it in a bit. Onto the grill for about 3-4 minutes a side. Amazing. Just the right amount of burn, great intense flavor. Nice texture on the bok choi. And this meal used both daikon and bok choi in two different ways!

• Paella!

I had a whole chicken, a bunch of veggies, it was a nice night, and I got the paella itch. And so it was. There are as many paella recipes as there are people with large shallow pans so I won't really get into the recipe too much, other than to say that I put in a whole jointed chicken with gizzards, some guanciale, a half pound of mussels, some Miami chorizo, a CSA zucchini and squash, some red bell peppers and a tomato from the yard, assorted CSA herbs and house herbs. And the last of my proper Calasparra rice.

Don't Do This

What I will mention is this: a tale of woe and tragedy that almost ruined my ricey dreams. It is a chronicle of hubris and punishment of ignorance. It concerns a nearly incinerated paellera and an overzealous grill-master.

Prior to this episode I always made paella inside, switching between the stove and oven. Keeps good control and the pan serves 8, not 30, so I don't need the big burner. But it was a nice night, so I decided to go outside and use the grill like a real man. Sadly, I was simultaneously overzealous with the charcoal and impatient in letting the fire die down. So the pan went on, oil went in, infrared thermometer said 375, chicken bits went in and were all cooked well, then they were removed and the guanciale went in. At this point things went horribly, horribly wrong.

Keeping the lid off the BBQ was really heating up the coals. Soon the thermometer was off the chart, the guanciale was beginning to burn, grease fires imminent. So I rescued the guanciale, took the pan off, ran across the deck with my lame pot mitts doing an insufficient job on the searing handles, dumped the now blackened oil, and spent about half an hour spraying the now blackened pan and trying to scrape the burned on crud off.

Took the noticeably still charred pan back inside and finished on the stove. The paella was still really, really good. Haven't been able to get my incinerated pan back to rights though...lesson learned.

• Caldo Verde
  

Had to use last week's kale. Didn't want to make kale chips again. So the national soup of Portugal it is!

I set off from this recipe and it was good, but kinda bland, thin and lifeless. So I added some more paprika. Then I was pondering what else to do when it hit me: Trotter Gear! So I dug one of the jars out of the fridge and added a couple big spoonfuls. Suddenly the soup had body, and some nice unctuous goodness. Great with some fresh bread, and it used the leftover chorizo from the Paella, all the kale, and all my old red potatoes. To do again I would say use a good stock and some more garlic and it would be really good.

• Tzatziki

I used last week's cucumbers to make some tzatziki. I'm fortunate enough to live near Miami's Oriental Bakery, so I was able to procure some fresh pitas and the secret ingredient to awesome tzatziki: labaneh.

To make watery, lame tzatziki you need non-fat plain yogurt.
To make ok, but still meh tzatziki you need plain yogurt.
To make good tzatziki you need strained yogurt.

You can take plain yogurt, hang it in some cheesecloth over the sink for a couple hours, and it will be good.

Or you can go for the gusto and skip straight to the thick-yogurt-cheese-universe-expanding-awesomeness of good labaneh. You can find it by the pint or quart at most middle eastern markets. There's a brand called Romi's out of New Jersey that's pretty good.

Here's the tzatziki recipe. Take two cucumbers. Top and tail them, then cut them in half lengthwise. Scoop out the seeds with a spoon. Grate the cucumbers into a bowl and sprinkle with some salt. Let them sit for an hour or two, stirring occasionally, then strain them and wring them out in a paper towel. Mix the cucumbers with a pint of labaneh, two crushed cloves of garlic, a tablespoon or two of olive oil, and some minced mint or dill if you're feeling like it. Adjust for salt and serve with pitas, or on souvlaki or falafel, or with lamb. It's amazing.

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CSA Week 16

Ok here's this week.

• Callaloo
• Zucchini
• Squash
• Cucumbers
• Green Bell Pepper
• Kale
• Hakurei Turnips
• Herbs

The Callaloo went into a fish curry dish. (Below). The Zucchini's will split between the BBQ and some great Zucchini bread by Meredith. The squash will be roasted with a chicken and some other veggies and most of the herbs. The Kale will probably go in the roast dinner too. The Hakurei Turnips? I'm thinking a side dish maybe? With the leftover kimchi?

This week and last week wrapup
The Bahn Mi were delicious. After the viet-baguettes were gone the rest of the chicken and pickled veggies went into a big asian salad.

The cherry tomatoes went into a sortof Caprice Salad with some basil and mozzarella.

I used about half a quart jar of the kimchi in a soup, with some stew-beef, and one of the squashes. It was nuclear, but pretty good.

Pompano with Callaloo and Coconut Curry

This weekend Meredith came home from the store with a 1/3lb Pompano fillet. So it became Iron Chef time to figure out what to do with it, while still using as many CSA veggies as possible. Pompano is an excellent Florida fish, just delicious. This recipe is loosely based on one for Coconut Curried Wahoo from Steven Raichlen's excellent Miami Spice.

Fish and Marinade

• Pompano Fillet, about 1 per person. But we split ours because we only had one.
• lime juice, maybe one lime per fillet.
  
• minced garlic, maybe a clove or so per fillet.
  
• salt/pepper

Coat the fillet in lime juice, garlic, salt and pepper and let sit for 20 minutes while you do the rest. When sauce, greens and rice are ready, saute in non-stick pan with some olive oil until done.

West Indian Coconut Curry Sauce

• 2 T olive oil
• 1 Onion, chopped
• 3 cloves garlic, minced
• 3 scallions
• 1 red ripe Serrano chile, minced (from our backyard garden)
  
• 1 Red Bell Pepper, cored seeded finely chopped. (garden)
• 1 T West Indian Curry Powder (see Callaloo and Goat Curry from week 4)
• 1 can peeled whole tomatoes, chopped
• 1 small green tomato from the garden, chopped
• 1 bay leaf
• 1/2 cup combined chopped cilantro (garden) and Italian parsley (CSA)
• 1 can coconut milk plus about 1/4 can water
• 1 t Better Than Bouillon Organic Chicken Stock

Heat the oil in a saucepan. Cook the onion, garlic, Serrano, bell pepper, and scallions till soft, about 5 minutes. Add the curry powder, cook a minute. Add the tomatoes, up the heat, cook a minute. Add the bay leaf, half the parsley/cilantro, the can of coconut milk and the bouillon. Simmer till thick and delicious. Just before serving stir in all but about a tablespoon of the remaining cilantro and parsley.

Greens

• 1 bunch Callaloo, stemmed, washed, dried, leaves rolled and sliced about 1/8" thick. Collards, kale or spinach would probably work too. Ditch the stems, they're too much trouble.
  
• 1 clove garlic, chopped
• 2 T olive oil
• salt to taste
  

Heat the oil in a wok to about 325 (I've really gotten into my infra-red thermometer!), add the garlic, saute 30 seconds then in with the greens. Cook them for about 3 minutes until very wilted.

To serve. Mound rice on plate. Pile some greens on top. Pour some curry around the outer edges of the rice. Place pompano fillet on top. Sprinkle with remaining cilantro and parsley.

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CSA: Daikon Kimchi / Bahn Mi pickles

So what did I do this weekend? I made kimchi. A lot of kimchi.

It began with a giant daikon in this week's CSA box. Then watering the garden I noticed that one of the bok choi's had flowered. And we also had a bunch of chard this week. The solution: monster batch of kimchi. More, in fact, that I had ever planned for. Ok so not super traditional, no Napa cabbage, etc., but I figure it will work out just fine. I also didn't feel like running out to Lucky Mart (closest decent Asian grocer), so I grabbed a small bottle of (crap) fish sauce at the local supermarket and decided to use my own copious stockpile of dry chile powder rather than use authentic Korean chiles. The recipe is roughly based on this one from the New York Times.

The veggies were as follows. I washed the stalks of the bok choi, then using a v-cut removed the stems from the leaves. Then I halved lengthwise and chopped the bok choi stalks and put in a large glass bowl. The leaves were saved for later. Then about 3/4 of the daikon was peeled and chopped. Then the chard was again v-cut, slicing the stalks and keeping the leaves separate. At this point I realized I had about 4 quarts of veggies when I'd planned on about 2. Time to double the recipe... So the stems were mixed with 4 T kosher salt and 4 T sugar, and left for two hours, stirred occasionally.

While they were soaking I made the chile paste. Into the Cuisinart went:

• about 20 coins of ginger. (All I had).
• about 25 cloves of garlic. (Got tired of peeling garlic.)
  
• a cup of sugar
• 1/2 cup ground New Mexico Red chile
• 1/2 cup ground Nambe Pueblo Heirloom chile
• 1/4 cup fish sauce
• 1/2 cup soy sauce
• 4 t dried shrimp
• 1/4 cup water
  

Blitzed until it was a nuclear red paste. Smelled great.

After two hours I drained off the stalks. The leaves were rolled up and chopped into a chiffonade. I chopped two green onions and a fist sized shallot. Everything was mixed together and was placed into jars. I rubber-banded some paper towels on top to let them breathe for a day or two, then they're getting their lids back.

Looks like we'll be eating a lot of Korean in the near future... and I was all set on Kalbi Beef Short-Ribs when I made a serious mistake at the butcher today. Without thinking I asked him to cut me some short ribs, not realizing that while in Seattle 1) there certainly would have been Korean cut short-ribs in the case already and 2) "short ribs" would have at least caused the follow up question: "Thick or thin?". Around here they're often called "Flanken" and I just spaced on it and the guy cut me some monster 4" x 4" short ribs.

D'oh!

So alternate plan B is to use the stew meat that was going to be Guinness stew for St. Patty's in something closer to a Korean noodle dish and I'll braise the short ribs in Guinness instead. Take the bone out and serve the rib meat in a boxty, should be awesome.

Bahn Mi Pickles

I also made a jar of picked daikon and carrots for this week's Bahn Mi's. The rest of the daikon was shredded, as were three carrots, and placed in a quart jar. Mixed three cups of water, 3 T of rice wine vinegar, 2 T of sugar and 2 T of salt. Into the jar. Into the fridge. They're ready in an hour and get more sour as the week goes by. Chicken is marinating and I'm going to go light the grill in a minute. One breast will go toward a Vietnamese themed salad tonight, the rest will be sandwiches this week.

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CSA Week 15

Here's this week:

• The Biggest Daikon Evar!

Ok I'm sure there have been bigger ones. But it did remind me of the freaky Radish God from Spirited Away. I like his little rice-bowl hat.

The plan for this one is to grate some and make pickled daikon and carrots for Bahn Mi's this week. Meredith has already made a batch of rice-flour baguettes. (nom nom nom) The rest will go into Daikon Kimchi with the chard.

• Mizuna

Into a salad most likely. Or maybe on the side with some kimchi and korean spare-ribs if we go that route.

• Chard

Kimchi

• Grapefruits

I hate grapefruit. But Meredith doesn't.

• Lettuce

Salads that I should be eating more of anyway.

• Cherry Tomatoes

Salads probably.

• Yellow Squash

Who knows. Something. Maybe grilled or sauteed.

Leftover Wrapup

• Pasta Verde "CSA"

This was an attempt to accomplish several things with one go. I wanted to use a lot of last week's veggies at once, I wanted to try some of the guanciale, I wanted several meals, and I didn't want to go to the store. Thus, Pasta Verde CSA was born.

It began with a pesto. The remaining half of the arugula leaves were blanched for 15 seconds in the water that would later boil my pasta. Then it went into the food processor with three cloves of garlic, some Italian and Thai basil from the yard, some walnuts from the freezer, some grated parmesan, and some salt and pepper. I whizzed it up and then drizzled olive oil in until it became pesto. Set aside.

Into a large skillet went some chopped guanciale (about 6 oz) and some chopped pancetta (maybe 3 oz? I just used what I had left). You can see on the right that though recipes often use them interchangeably they are quite different (mmmm cured fat...). The guanciale is on the left and the pancetta on the right. Some good friends made the guanciale using a Berkshire pig jowl that they then cured, while I cured the pancetta a month or so ago. Both are delicious but taste different both in flavor and texture. Anyway, these were cooked on medium to render out some fat until they were golden brown and crispy delicious. Removed and drained.

Poured off the fat into a coffee cup, then put about a tablespoon and a half back in. In went two cloves of garlic, minced, and the lower bulbs of the three spring onions, chopped. Also one chopped green bell pepper was added. Cooked until the onions started to brown a little, added some red pepper flakes and some mexican oregano. Added the spring onion tops, chopped at this point and cooked till wilted. Then in went the kale, stems and veins removed, leaves rolled up and thinly sliced. Added a glug of white wine vinegar to sharpen the greens then wilted the kale for about 3 minutes.

Three minutes was long enough to cook the pasta, some fettuccine (about 12 oz.). Drained the noodles, added the greens to the pot, then the noodles, then the pesto. Mixed it all up, garnished with guanciale and pancetta and some more Parmesan. It was delicious, and used up a lot of my CSA veggies at once. I was really happy with how the kale came out, but more pleased with how crispy, salty and delicious the guanciale was!

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CSA Week 14

So the laptop has received some much needed TLC and we're back in business.

What did we get this week?

• Lettuce
• Kale
• Arugula
• Spring Onions
• Green Bell Peppers
• Strawberries
• Parsley

Looks like it will be a lot of salads this week. Maybe some peppers into a stirfry? We had a party on Sunday and I have a fair amount of random leftovers (though the Cuban roast pork, ribs, and Smoked Pork Chile Verde were all ravenously devoured. So much for those plans!) Meredith has it in mind to do some kind of soba noodle soup with the spring onions and kale. I do have some leftover canistels that are ripe, I'll try take two on Canistel Pie. Some (very) good friends brought us a whole guanciale that they'd cured, so I'm thinking of doing a pasta dish with some of that and the kale or arugula, maybe some roasted green peppers. Probably a play on Bucatini all'Amatriciana, but with more veggies.

Anyhow, here's what we have done so far, as well as last week's wrapup.

Goat Cheese and Arugula Chile Rellenos

Last night I looked in the fridge and began to plan. I've been trying really hard to use things that we have in the fridge or backyard, minimizing trips to the store for items that can be substituted for or left out entirely. In this spirit I saw that we had some goat cheese leftover from the party (thanks again to those same friends!). We had some salsa that Meredith had made for breakfast tacos. We had some Mexican crema, a ripe CSA avocado, CSA arugula and a whole bunch of ripening poblano chiles in the yard...so why not Goat Cheese Rellenos? Like a spinach ravioli but with goat cheese and arugula and in a relleno? So for two people:

• 4 good sized poblano chiles. Roasted, peeled. Make a slit down one side and carefully remove the seeds and any pesky central veins. Rubbing them and then filling the cavity with water does a good job. Be careful not to tear the flesh, it helps if you can roast the chiles as hot and quickly as possible so the skin blisters but the flesh doesn't cook. I turn my electric stove on high and set them right on the coil (with the hood on high and the window open, you'll be releasing pepper spray!) At hot grill works well too. Put them in a paper bag for 20 minutes to sweat the skins off before peeling.
• Filling. Into a bowl put 1/3 lb goat cheese, a pinch of mexican oregano, thyme, and marjoram, a chopped serrano chile, about 2 T of chopped shallot, a chopped sun dried tomato, and some salt and pepper. Get a pot of water simmering and blanch a clove of garlic for 5 minutes, meanwhile clean and pick the leaves from half the CSA arugula bunch. When the garlic clove is done take it out and put the arugula in for 30 seconds, then remove and shock with cold water. Chop all this and add to the filling mixture. Mix well and divide into four portions.
• Prepping the chiles: stuff with 1/4 of the mixture. Use a toothpick or skewer to close the chile. Meanwhile heat a pan of oil to 375. While it's heating mix an egg and 2 T of cream in a separate bowl, and put some blue cornmeal in another dish for dredging.
• Dip a chile in the egg-mixture, then dredge in the blue cornmeal and fry 2-3 minutes until slightly brown. Drain on paper towels and keep warm in the oven.
• Serve on a plate with a fan of avocado and some salsa served in a kale leaf. Drizzle a little Mexican crema over it. Serve with a couple tortillas.

It was pretty tasty. It looks like a lot of work but it only took about an hour. Also it turned out that the goat cheese had lavender and fennel pollen in it, so it really became this weird Italian/Southwest fusion thing. All in all I was pretty happy, though I would have liked some more heat. Apparently I'm not tormenting my chile plants enough. You could probably add some quinoa or rice to build up the body of the stuffing as well. If I had any Jack cheese I would probably have added some to the filling as well.

Carrot Top Soup (or Thanksgiving Stuffing Babyfood)

I set out to make the Carrot Top soup from last week's newsletter but it turned out that I was missing some ingredients so I improvised...

No veggie stock = frozen homemade duck stock
No fresh dill and various other herbs = dried thyme and some herbs de provence
I added a celery stalk because I had one and I could.

I didn't really like the texture of it when it was done, so I hit it with the hand-blender a bit, but then I liked it even less. So I added a tablespoon of heavy cream and a some inside bits of a baguette that'd been hollowed out for a sandwich earlier that day. Then pureed the bejesus out of it. This resulted in a seriously thick and creamy carrot soup, that thanks to the herbs de provence made it taste "like Thanksgiving stuffing baby food", in the words of Meredith. Thanks love.

But she was right. It did taste like Thanksgiving Stuffing Babyfood. And it was delicious, a hypothetical future baby would love it. Served it with some leftover croutons from the Panzanella and a greek salad.

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CSA Week 13 - Pad Thai, Panzanella, Kale Chips, Ceviche, Edible Collards 2, and King of Snake!

Here's this week. Sorry it's delayed, had to get the new site up and working. (Mostly...)

• Yukon Savoy

Tonight it's going into a pasta dish with orecchiette, peas, the spring onion, some dill and pancetta, and a lemon cream sauce.

• Carrots w/ Tops

I think I'm going to make the soup from the back of the newsletter. Let you know how it turns out.

• Spring Onion

Pasta tonight.

• Collards

I made collards edible again! See below.

• Avocado

Probably salsa or guac when it's ripe.

• Cherry Tomatoes

These went into a roasted veggie panzanella. See below.

• Red Potatoes

Boiled, served with butter and dill as a side for a grilled rib eye and collards.

• Cilantro

Most of it went into the ceviche. The rest will probably go into salsas. See below.

• Mint

Mojitos! Also a bit went into ceviche pasta salad. See below.


LEFTOVER WRAPUP AND THIS WEEK'S USES

• Pad Thai / Bok Choi with Shiitake Mushrooms

A lot of the leftover veggies from last week went into a catch-all Pad Thai, especially the last half of the green beans. Next to it is a great use for our Bok Choi out in the garden, based on this recipe. It's easy and uses dried shiitakes, so we can make it pretty much any time. Except we ran out of fish sauce. Off to Lucky Mart...

Here's some advice on Pad Thai:

1. Hot wok! Very very hot wok! I use my infrared thermometer to get it up to 450 or so before I start. It would go higher if it wasn't teflon and we had a decent fume hood. Then it's on full hot for the whole cooking. Also chop your garlic pretty big or it will be incinerated.
   
2. Soak your noodles in cold water for at least two hours. You can cheat and pour boiling water over and wait 15 minutes, but they tend to both be a bit crunchy and yet somehow mushy at the same time, and they stick together something fierce.
3. Ketchup. The Thai love it, and so should you. Sometime we'll make our friend Om's Ketchup Chicken and post it. Give your noodles a quick squirt when you add the fish sauce, etc.
4. Palm sugar. Use palm sugar, or at the very least light brown sugar, not white sugar. Palm sugar has an almost maple flavor that is irreplaceable.
   
5. Prep everything in advance. Preferably in little bowls by order of addition. Total cooking time will only be a few minutes.

• Kale Chips

The kale went into Kale Chips. Snapped a photo this time. Here they are cooling. Very easy. Set the oven to 250. Clean and stem the kale. Lay it out on two cookie sheets. Spray with olive oil. Not too much. Sprinkle with kosher salt and fresh cracked black pepper. Flip them, repeat. Into the oven for 20-25 minutes or so, or until they're crunchy and delicious. Took these to a party: devoured. Side effect: happy vegetarians.

• Roasted Veggie Panzanella

Meredith had baked two loaves of bread for the week and for various reasons we had about 3/4 of a loaf leftover and rapidly getting stale. So this weekend the Cherry Tomatoes went into a roasted veggie panzanella using this recipe as a starting point. Included were a small bok choi, a green bell pepper and a poblano pepper from the garden (roasted and peeled, then chopped), as well as both Italian and Thai basil. Some feta and kalamatas completed it. Outstanding.

• The Ceviche Saga

So we got the cilantro on Saturday, and I have a lot of chiles in the garden and we had two huge bags of lemons and limes. So I thought: ceviche! Thus began our hunt for fish. Sunday morning's fishing expedition went...poorly. I caught a small 'cuda but was not about to eat it. Everything else either got away or was tiny. So we went to the store.

Normally we are pretty picky about fish, very ardent about both locality and freshness. Doubly so if it's going to be eaten raw or cooked in citrus juice. So we were hoping to find some local mahi. No dice. So it was a choice between red snappers from Panama (big no-no), Chilean Sea Bass (are you kidding me?), Wild Salmon from the NW (a possibility) or Wild Cod from the U.S. We decided, after much debate, that cod was the safe choice and picked up a fillet, as well as some farmed U.S. bay scallops.

I got to juicing limes while Meredith set to making some refreshing beverages.

Side note: King of Snake!

The background to this is that some months ago we put a single dried Bhut Jolokia chile into a bottle vodka and let it hang out ever since. Bhut Jolokias, or 'Ghost Chiles', are the hottest in the world, and can weigh in at a million scoville, nearly twice a habanero. Apart from hilarity at parties we hadn't found a use for this napalm, until we saw this recipe in last month's Bon Appetit:

King of Snake Cocktail - Bon Appétit | March 2009

From Indochine in Christchurch, New Zealand

Yield: Makes 2

1 1/3-inch slice peeled fresh ginger, coarsely chopped
2 tablespoons (packed) golden brown sugar
2 cups ice cubes
1/4 cup vodka
1/4 cup fresh lemon juice
2 tablespoons chile-pepper-flavored vodka (such as Absolut Peppar or Stolichnaya Pepper)
2 tablespoons Cointreau or other orange liqueur
Crushed ice

Muddle ginger and sugar in cocktail shaker until paste forms. Add all remaining ingredients except crushed ice; cover and shake 15 seconds. Fill 2 old-fashioned glasses with crushed ice. Strain cocktail into glasses and serve.

Put on Underworld's King of Snake really loud and drink up! This was actually really quite refreshing, the ginger helped balance the jaw dropping burn, keeping me just at the point of hiccups and leaving a lingering burn. Not something you want to shoot. But it was nice to sip while cooking. Moving on.

So the ceviche consisted of:

• 2/3 cup lime juice, 1/3 cup lemon juice
• 8oz can of crab meat, not fancy lump or anything. You'll see why.
• 1/4 cup or so of chopped celery
• couple tablespoons chopped red onion
• 1 1/2 t chopped, peeled ginger
• 1 garlic clove, peeled.
• half cup of leftover jerked Grouper, picked off the head and spine. Mmm leftovers!
• 4 T chopped cilantro
• 1 1/2 t salt
  

Whizzz this all up in the blender until smooth. Then press through a sieve into a non-reactive bowl. Then add:

• 1 lb or so 1/2" cubed white fish (mahi, tilapia, cod, snapper, grouper)
• 1/2 lb bay scallops, cut in half if they are bigger than 1/2"
• 2 T cilantro
• 1/2 t salt
• chiles to taste, minced. I used a jalapeno and a serrano, but use Peruvian Aji's if you can.
• 1 cup red onion, julienned

Mix, cover, and let hang out for an hour and a half to two hours, stirring occasionally. Serve with chips, or spoon. Should serve four. Not the best CSA recipe I know, but it did use 6 T of the cilantro.

Side note: because we used the crab (you could use clam juice instead) we had a vibrant green paste leftover in the sieve. Thinking about it, I realized nothing that went in was raw and nothing was bad to eat as it was. So we mixed in some bread crumbs, formed it into patties and coated them in panko. Fried till crispy golden brown and delicious we had a badass Scooby-Snack for the chefs while we waited for the ceviche to 'cook'. Served with a quick sauce of ketchup, soy sauce and chile oil. Not bad, very limey.

So naturally there was leftovers. And leftover ceviche...goes bad fast. So the next day I decided to make a sortof pasta salad with it. The remaining ceviche was combined with:

• half a pound bowtie pasta, cooked al dente and cooled
• some capers, red onion, feta, kalamatas (pitted and chopped), mint, olive oil, sherry vinegar, half a big tomato and some frozen corn, thrown in with the pasta for the last 30 seconds or so of the boil to thaw
  

It was really good, and I ate it for lunch for two days! Today it was pretty fishy though, so I'm glad it's gone.

Edible Collards (2)

Part two in my ongoing struggle to make collard green edible. And I did find a second way. Apparently it's the way they do it in Brazil, and it is very quick and easy.

Cut the stems and larger veins out of the leaves. Discard the stems, they are more trouble than they're worth. Roll a stack of the leaves up like a cigar, then slice thinly (like 1/8" to 1/16"). Heat large pan to 350 or so. Throw in three chopped cloves of garlic, cook 30 seconds, then the greens. Stirfry them for about 3-4 minutes until they seem tender. Sprinkle with salt to taste, about a teaspoon and a half maybe. Serve.

That's it. Done. And it took like 10 minutes to make. None of this cooking them for hours until gray and lifeless. Or loading them up with pork. (Not that that is all bad...) In the future I may try adding some sesame oil and seeds...

Served this as a side with a grilled rib-eye topped with melted Stilton, and some of the red potatoes with butter and dill.

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CSA Week 12

Crazy weekend, what with the Coconut Cup on Saturday. Here's this weeks' haul:

• Lettuce

Salads this week.

• Kale

Still a bit unclear. Thinking about a pasta dish, or kale chips again for a party tomorrow.

• Roma Tomatoes

Salad, salsa (oh man are our chile plants producing!!!), maybe into some pasta. Last week we did a Carbonara (Armandino Battali's Recipe from Salumi!) and added two Romas so it wasn't all pancetta and cheese... Just mostly.

• Strawberries

Like the last round of Strawberries these were right on the verge of going bad. So they were immediately chopped and placed in a bowl with some sugar and chopped carambola and left to macerate in the fridge for future use. See below.

• Dill

Will go into a variety of sides and salads.

• Green Beans

Three-quarters or so went into Dill Beans last night for a side. The rest will be part of a general catch all Thai stirfry.

• Canistels

When they're ripe I'm thinking Canistel Pie Mk II?

• Callaloo

Argh, I thought we were done. Well I've still got a bunch of West Indian Curry spice that I mixed up. I'll see if I can find some more goat or maybe use the greens as a base for a Jerk Snapper or something.

Last Week Wrapup / Uses So far

The Black Sapotes went into another round of Black Sapote Muffins and they are excellent. Even better this time. In a flash of genius, I took the macerated strawberries and carambola slices and made a sortof Strawberry Shortcake with a Black Sapote Muffin, Strawberries and Carambolas, and a dollop of Meyer Lemon Curd on Top. Outstanding.

Last night's dinner took a German twist. I had some leftover Weisswursts that I made last month and decided to use them. So on the left we have a Weisswurst (recipe from Michael Ruhlman's Charcuterie) on a bed of the red potatoes we got last week, par-boiled then sauteed with some leftover sauerkraut, red onion, garlic, and juniper berries. There were some steamed green beans with butter, chopped dill, salt, pepper, and dill seed. And a radish salad using the radish tops and sliced red radishes and french breakfast radishes with dill and a leftover bit of tzatziki from Mykonos. All in all a pleasantly satisfying dinner.

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