(More) Lettuce Pasta

It's November but the lettuce keeps coming. Each week, bags and bags of it show up in my kitchen. I'm almost at the point of hoping the CSA will finally come to an end. The only solution to this problem -- more lettuce pasta.

Fortunately, I found a little Italian store about twenty minutes away that carries imported meats and cheeses. Sadly, the cheese comes pre-cut and packaged, but the meats are sliced while you wait... I picked up a 1/4 pound of Prosciutto di Parma and made a quick antipasto platter with olives and some roasted red peppers. Some shaved ricotta salata flavored with truffles added some variety to this evening's boring lettuce pasta. 

Curried Pumpkin Soup with Roasted Pumpkin Seeds, Cilantro, and Lime

Pumpkin and Squash soups are fairly easy to make. For this one, I halved a small pumpkin, removed its innards, and roasted it at 400 degrees F for an hour. The roasted pumpkin was added to sauteed onion and garlic seasoned with garlic powder, cumin, coriander, and mild curry powder. Add vegetable stock and cook for 20 minutes, puree with hand blender and top with lime juice, roasted pumpkin seeds, and cilantro.

Rigatoni with Sauteed Lettuce and Garlic; Roasted Radicchio; Crostini with Cilantro Pesto and Roasted Chery Tomatoes

This year, the late summer CSA bounty is getting ridiculous. Every week, we come home with bags and bags of lettuce. We're not the green-salad-with-every-meal type, so we've had to make an awful lot of lettuce pasta in order to stay ahead of the coming week's haul. Though fairly boring, its an easy way to use up your lettuce since you need about 4 parts lettuce to one part pasta for the ratio to work.

A radiccio, quartered, roasted, and drizzled with balsamico made a simple side dish. To start, crostini with cilantro pesto (just substitute cilantro for basil in a regular pesto dish; you can leave out the reggiano or keep in, depending on your taste) and roasted cherry tomatoes (halved and roasted with garlic cloves, olive oil, vinegar, thyme, and a little brown sugar for 1 hour at 400 degrees F)

Stuffed Tomatoes and Red Bell Peppers

I made a mixture of sauteed greens, onions, left-over risotto, parmigiano-reggiano, and bread crumbs as a stuffing for both, then baked in a 350 degree oven.

Frittata with Swiss Chard, Mushrooms, and Goat Cheese

For years, I have been looking for a decent non-stick, oven-safe pan to make frittate, the technique for which requires you transfer from cooktop to hot oven. Until now, I never could justify the cost of yet another pan in the pantry. But when I recently came across a significantly-marked down Swiss Diamond pan at Marshalls, I really couldn't pass it up. Like risotto, there are endless variations on the classic frittata... this one used up a bunch of things from the CSA.

Roasted Beet Risotto with Goat Cheese

I'm always experimenting with variations on risotto. Once you have the basic technique down, there are hundreds of ways to use up left-over items in the fridge and pantry. I roasted a couple of beets, diced them, and added them about 2/3 of the way through the cooking. Once finished, I folded in some goat cheese and topped with leftover kale chips.

Spaghetti con Le Zucce

 

Spaghetti with Squash
-1 3½ to 4-pound butternut squash
-4 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
-2 to 3 large cloves garlic, coarsely chopped
-1/4 teaspoon hot red pepper flakes, or more to taste
-1 tablespoon rosemary leaves (optional)
-7 to 9 cups water, maybe a little more
-1½ teaspoons salt, or more to taste
-12 ounces spaghetti or small tubular pasta
-Grated Parmigiano-Reggiano or pecorino
 

Cut the squash in half and scoop out the seeds with a spoon. Discard the seeds. Peel the bottom of the squash, then cut it into more or less 1-inch cubes.

Cook the garlic, hot pepper and optional rosemary in olive oil in a deep pot. Do not let the garlic color. Add the squash cubes and continue to cook over medium heat, stirring frequently, for about 10 minutes, until the surface of the squash seems to be getting cooked.

Add the 7 cups of water. Bring to a boil and boil the squash for about 15 minutes, until quite soft. Mash with a potato masher. Then bring the squash to a rolling boil over high heat. Add the pasta and, stirring fairly regularly, cook until the pasta is well-cooked.

Salad Nicoise

In a hot minute, we went from baskets full of CSA tomatoes to just two. The very last of the season screamed for use in a recipe that feels like summer... Salad Nicoise. Dressed with Jacques Pepin's simple vinaigrette, of course.

Beans and Greens with Homegrown Borlotti

At long last, we have a garden. It's not like the old Worth Street city garden. Those raised beds, though well-meaning, were crammed in our tiny backyard and shaded by tall trees. Thus, they never had the potential to produce more than a handful of herbs. Our new set up is a large plot with full sun and that appears to have been used by the previous homeowner and the homeowner before that.

Alas, we didn't have time to take advantage of the land this year. The house itself comes first Nonetheless, K resolutely decided to throw in some tomato, chicory, and borlotti bean seeds. All three, with zero maintenance, turned out great.

The beautiful borlotti, which K dried on the vine, made their way into this classic beans and greens soup with homemade chicken brother and parmigiano-reggiano. 

Adventures in Canning

K got me a canning pot, jars, and all the necessary accoutrements for my birthday. It's probably the best present that I ever received. Nothing exudes eating local more than the act of canning your own organically-grown produce for the winter. In this case, of course, we used an absolute dearth of CSA tomatoes and tomatillos and canned crushed tomatoes, whole tomatoes, and tomato sauce, plus a roasted tomatillo salsa. The full day production was laborious and time consuming, but well worth it. In addition to the satisfaction of eating local, the process also makes anyone with half a historical consciousness feel closer to the past. This is how our grandparents and great grandparents ate. Seems appropriate that we would do the same.

Orecchiette with Red Lentil Sauce; Insalata Caprese

For some reason, the people who owned our little house before us decided that they didn't want an outdoor space. So the door leading from our kitchen doesn't take us to a large deck with beautiful views of our pretty, double lot with mature trees and a plethora of fauna ranging from blue jays to screech owls to racoon families to deer herds. Instead, it leads directly to a set of stairs.

If you want to admire the view, you have to sit on a step.

So for the time being, our outdoor dining takes place on a concrete pad at the base of said stairs.

Though a deck would be nice, the pad provided a perfect place to enjoy the first tomatoes of the season using the very best preparation for good tomatoes -- a caprese salad.

Risotto-Stuffed Cubanelle Peppers with Quick Tomato Sauce

I don't like to eat left-overs for dinner. Heating up last night's meal for dinner is just too easy.  The caveat, of course, is if you can take last night's food and turn it into something new. I did just that with some leftover Risotto Milanese. I used it as a filler for some cubanelle peppers that came in from the CSA, baked them in a 375 degree oven for 30 minutes, and served them on a simple tomato sauce.

Corn Chowder

This year, the CSA decided to offer a supplemental "corn share." We didn't subscribe. Probably a good thing. The way things have been going, the corn probably failed too.

So a roadside stand in rural New Jersey provided the supplies for a quick corn chowder. Trader Joe's plain soy milk provides a perfect replacement for milk or cream, which I think takes a light summer dish and turns it into something heavy and thick. Topped with crostini, and a few jalapenos and the first tomatoes from our garden.

Berry Sheet Cake

I don't regularly read Martha Stewart Magazine. But I have to admit that we have a huge stack of them in the basement. It appears that K's mom got a subscription using her airline miles. The middle class can hardly afford to purchase airline flights anymore... but hey, we can use unused airline miles for periodicals! And one issue gave me this recipe for a nice cornmeal sheet cake... something I would otherwise never have made.

Red, white, and blue colors perfect for July 4... as, of course, the magazine pointed out.

Martha Stewart's Berry Sheet Cake

-1 1/2 sticks unsalted butter, room temperature, plus more for pan

-1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour

-3/4 cup fine yellow cornmeal

-1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder

-3/4 teaspoon coarse salt

-1 1/2 cups plus 2 tablespoons sugar

 -3 large eggs

 -1 1/2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract

 -3/4 cup buttermilk

-18 ounces mixed fresh berries, such as blueberries, raspberries, and blackberries (cut in half if large), plus more for serving

-Whipped cream, for serving

Preheat oven to 325 degrees. Butter a 9-by-13-inch baking pan and line with parchment, leaving overhang on long sides. Butter parchment. Whisk together flour, cornmeal, baking powder, and salt in a bowl. Beat butter and 1 1/2 cups sugar on medium-high speed until pale and fluffy, about 2 minutes. Add eggs, one at a time, beating well and scraping down sides of bowl as needed. Beat in vanilla. Add flour mixture in 3 batches, alternating with 2 batches of buttermilk and beating until just combined. Spread batter in prepared pan. Sprinkle berries over top, then sprinkle with remaining 2 tablespoons sugar. Bake until golden brown and a toothpick inserted into center comes out clean, about 1 hour. Let cool completely on a wire rack. Remove cake with parchment and cut into pieces (3 or 4 on short side, then 4 or 6 on long side). Cake is best served the same day, with whipped cream and additional berries.

Refrigerator Pickles

People have been slamming the CSA this year, so much so that the folks who run it felt obliged to issue an open letter to the subscribers. A mea culpa, it wasn't. They basically called out the complainers, saying that they were hurt by the insensitive comments and that subscribers needed to understand the nature of "community agriculture."

I guess that I can see both sides. To the complainers, shut the &^$% up! If you don't like it, go to Whole Foods.

To the CSA, why not offer your subscribers some alternatives in times that crops are slim? A couple of organic, free range eggs? Some flowers? Little tokens like this would make a big difference.

Anyway, we've received a dearth of cukes this past week, so I saw no recourse other than to pickle them. So I made picked cucumbers and zucchini (also in abundance) and threw in some onions and carrots for variety.

Ted Allen has a pretty sure-fire recipe. Too bad he's on that horrible channel called Food Network.

-10 cloves garlic, peeled
-2 cups white vinegar
-6 teaspoons kosher salt
-Several sprigs of fresh dill
-1 teaspoon celery seed
-1 teaspoon coriander seed
-1 teaspoon mustard seed
-1/2 teaspoon black peppercorns
-1/2 teaspoon pink peppercorns (if you have 'em)

In a medium saucepan, bring 4 cups water to a boil, reduce the heat so the water simmers and add the garlic. Cook for 5 minutes. Add the vinegar and salt, raise the heat and bring to a boil, stirring until the salt dissolves. Remove from the heat.

In 2 clear 1-quart jars, place a few sprigs of dill. Divide the seeds and peppercorns between the jars. Using tongs, remove the garlic from the brine and place 5 cloves in each jar. Then pack the jars full of cucumbers, carrots, scallions or green beans, cauliflower and chiles. You want them to be tightly stuffed.

Bring the brine back to a boil, pour it over the vegetables to cover completely, let cool, then cover and refrigerate. The pickles will taste good in just a few hours, better after a couple of days. And they'll keep for about 3 months.

Baked Fillet of Salmon; Pappardelle with Red Lentil Sauce

K often rages about the food of her ancestors in Poland. It's all "too beige," she says. I guess that is true when you think of things like kluskis, haluski, pierogies, etc.

In Italy, you see many more greens and reds on the plate, which I guess explains why she is really Italian at heart.

This dish, though Italian inspired, fits the "beige" bill. A piece of baked salmon along side a simple pasta dish of pappardelle cooked with some Trader Joe's split red lentils. 

Lentils with Basmati Rice, Crispy Onions, and Yogurt Sauce

Fairly simple concoction. Cook rice and lentils with some assorted spices like cumin, coriander, curry, etc., and top with onions that have been slow cooked in a substantial amount of oil (in cast iron) until crispy. Top lentils and rice with crispy onions and serve with a simple yogurt sauce (plain yogurt, lemon juice, garlic, salt.)

Penne with Swiss Chard, Crostini, Roasted Cashews with Lemon and Thyme

We are never without bread in the household. I try to pick up a loaf and bring it home. If not, there is usually some in the freezer. By the way, the best way to reconstitute a frozen loaf is popping it into a hot, 400 degree oven for five minutes. For some reason, I had no bread on this occasion, so some melba rounds had to suffice... it worked, but I won't try it again... It's too "Good Housekeeping" for me.

Grilled Lamb Chops with Chimichurri, Tortilla Espanola, Braised Greens