A huge head of Escarole (the above picture is only half of the share)
A head of Romaine lettuce
a head of Boston lettuce
2 Baby Japanese Salad Turnips (sadly only two...I really liked these last week)
a big bunch of Swiss chard
baby bok choy
and garlic scapes
Garlic scapes seem to be the darling of the food blogging world and I've never tried them, so I'm somewhat excited, although they don't look like much amidst all the other produce.
I used this pie making opportunity to use a new mini cookie cutter set I have in the shape of Noah's ark and the animals. I've never made a strawberry rhubarb pie before and I fudged the measurements for the filling based on a number of different recipes (primarily that old standby the Betty Crocker Cookbook). I used almost two full cups of sugar for the filling which is more than I normally put into a fruit pie filling and made the whole thing a bit sweeter than I personally like, but still very good. Sadly rhubarb is not the easiest thing to come by in my neighborhood and so I'll have to wait until the next time the CSA box has some to experiment with it again.
It's been a while since I've posted anything because I've been very busy with the end of the school semester and a lot of paper writing, but now that it is over I am ready for a summer of cooking, baking, sewing, beading and being generally crafty. Yesterday was the first pick up of the season for the CSA I joined and here is the bounty:
There is red and green Boston lettuce (I never knew it came in multiple varieties!), French breakfast radishes, Baby Japanese salad turnips, arugala, spinach, rhubarb and strawberries.
I made a salad today using CSA produce and some leftovers in my fridge and discovered that Japanese salad turnips might just be my new favorite thing. It was a fantastic salad and with the heat and humidity that we've been having it was very filling and refreshing. Stay tuned for my first strawberry-rhubarb pie!
Several weeks ago I made chocolate chip cookies to take into work. I used a new (to me) recipe that called for putting the dough in the fridge overnight and then slicing it like you do the cookie dough you can buy in the refrigerator section. That used to be the extend of my baking skills. While this recipe was slightly more time consuming, it left me with four rolls of cookie dough that each made a dozen cookies that were some of the best soft and chewy chocolate chip cookies I've had. I may have to start keeping some on hand. This really is for soft and chewy cookies and not crisp cookies. The best ones that I ended up with were the ones that were still slightly under done. The ones that were in the oven a bit longer were still good, but tasted more like store bough Chips Ahoy than soft homemade chocolate chip cookies. Just writing about them makes me wish I hadn't used up all the dough and could go pop some in the oven.
I went to Maine this past weekend and brought some fiddleheads back to the city. Fiddleheads are the unfurled fronds of young ferns. They grow wild in New England in early spring time. Although they are also available in canned form, I highly suggest avoiding those at all costs.
I prepared mine after cleaning and trimming them by boiling them for about two minutes and then I sauteed them with butter and garlic and two chopped white mushrooms until they were soft and tender. This was the first time I'd had fiddleheads since I was in college and could get them at the farm stand next door. Sadly, I've never seen fresh ones in my local supermarkets in New York. If you've never had them I highly suggest trying some. Consider them vegetarian escargot.
Today I signed up for the Sunnyside CSA program and I am super duper excited. I'm looking forward to making all kinds of savory vegetable pies. I only got the vegetable share for this year which I'm splitting with a friend because I'm not entirely sure how much volume it will actually be. They also offer a fruit share which was intriguing for pie making purposes, but we'll see how the vegetables go for this season.
I haven't had a CSA share since my second year in college. Back then though I didn't really know how to cook more than a few dishes and neither did any of the people I was living with. I remember we would get piles and piles of leeks and no one knew what to do with them so we'd stick them in flower vases all around the mod. Now I would love to have leeks all the time, so hopefully that won't happen. The jury is out on what I am going to do with all the greens though.
Normally I try to avoid Passover recipes that try to replicate the things that I'm giving up eating for the week. The rolls, brownies, cookies, etc. just never taste as good as the real thing and it hardly seems worth the calories when there are plenty of good things that you can eat. Of course even with the determination each year to eat salads, simple meals, and embrace the hundreds of things you can eat, I invariably end up craving bread halfway through. It's more surprising because I don't eat bread on a regular basis. This year, I invited company over and decided to see what I could do about making some sort of kosher for Passover pie.
Passover Turkey and Potato Pie Crust: 4 Matzos 2 Eggs 1/2 cup of matzo meal 1 tsp Thyme 8 Tbs of parve (non dairy) margarine salt to taste
Wet matzos, break into tiny pieces into a bowl. Melt margarine. Add eggs, margarine, spices and matzo meal to bowl. Mix together. Press into a 10" pie plate.
Filling: 1 lb ground turkey 1 onion, diced 1 clove garlic1/2 cup of frozen peas 2 Tbs. mushroom soup stock base (I use the Israeli brand Osem, you could use any sort of stock) 1 cup of water 1 tsp dried thyme 1 tsp dried oregano 2 tsp olive oilpotato starch (if needed) salt and pepper
Brown onion in olive oil with the garlic, add turkey and additional spices and cook through. Add water and soup stock base (or plain stock if using that) and frozen peas. Cook until peas are tender. If the filling is too liquid, stir in potato starch until it thickens. Put in matzo pie crust.
Topping: 4 medium sized potatos, boiled 2 cloves of garlic 1 tsp parsley 3 tbs water 2 tbs margarine
Boil potatoes and then mash with additional ingredients until smooth enough to spread on top of pie. Bake assembled pie in preheated oven for 30 minutes (or until potatoes start to brown on top) at 375 degrees. The pie reheats really well which is an extra bonus! Luckily I have just enough left to make it through these last few days even if I will be dreaming of an Italian dinner all the while.
The Duchy of Domesticity is the home of all the domestic projects that I feel like sharing with the world. Primarily at the moment this is pie. Because who doesn't like pie?
