A Shared CSA Story, or Root Vegetables and More Root Vegetables

We have very special guests in today’s post who you may be seeing a lot more – Rachel and Jon!  For those who do not know these two, they live directly across the street from Mark and me and we now share a bimonthlyCSA box.  We’ve crossed the street on vegetable box delivery days with the goal of using as many items from our shared box as possible for dinner. 

This week our box contained:

• Green peppers
• Chives
• Romaine (maybe? No one is quite sure – if it was romaine, it was the biggest romaine I have ever seen)
• Another mystery green we made up a name for
• White turnips
• A sweet potato
• Kale
• Butternut squash

Not in the box, but worth a mention:

• Farm-fresh eggs and tomatoes from Jon’s family in Indiana

While we didn’t use everything in the box, I think we made a good showing.  Plus, this entire dinner is vegetarian!  I should quote here, although some of you will not believe me, Mark said the following after cleaning his plate: “I really didn’t miss the meat.”

Honey-Roasted Root Vegetable Salad

(We started with this recipe from Food & Wine, but adjusted it to use what we had in our CSA box.)

Roasted Veggies:

1 big sweet potato, peeled and cut into 1 1/2 inch pieces
1 pound turnips, cut into 1 1/2-inch pieces
3 tablespoons olive oil
Salt and freshly ground pepper
3 tablespoons honey, warmed
1 tablespoon chopped sage leaves
4 ounces fresh goat cheese, at room temperature
1/4 cup minced fresh herbs (we used chives and flat-leaf parsley)
2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil (I would skip that next time, personally)

Salad:

1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil
2 tablespoons apple cider vinegar
1 large garlic clove, minced
1 tablespoon minced herbs, such as chives, tarragon and flat-leaf parsley
Salt and freshly ground pepper
4 cups romaine or whatever that thing was

Preheat oven to 400.  Toss the sweet potato and turnip pieces with olive oil and spread on a baking sheet.  The recipe asks you to salt and pepper them here, but some of us forgot and so we added it after roasted and no one cared.  Roast until soft, about 40 minutes.  Remove from oven and drizzle with honey and chopped sage leaves.  Roast again for about 20 minutes.  If they are soft and looked glazed, these guys are done!


In a bowl mix the goat cheese with the olive oil, then stir in the herbs.  I would not add the olive oil if I make this again.  As Mark said, it made the goat cheese look like tuna salad.  It was still delicious though.


Wash the greens well, rip them up and toss them in a salad bowl.  Whisk up the dressing.  Add one or two tablespoons to the greens. Add the rest to the roasted veggies and toss.  


Arrange the greens on the plate, top with veggies and a dollop of the goat cheese and you're done!


A close up:

Butternut Squash Lasagna

For our main course, we made a butternut squash lasagna with homemade noodles.  We used this recipe from epicurious.com as our base, but skipped the hazelnuts.  No one missed them!

For squash filling

• 1 large onion, chopped
• 3 tablespoons unsalted butter
• 3 lb butternut squash, peeled, seeded, and cut into 1/2-inch pieces
• 1 teaspoon minced garlic
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1/4 teaspoon white pepper
• 2 tablespoons chopped fresh flat-leaf parsley
• 4 teaspoons chopped fresh sage

For sauce

• 1 teaspoon minced garlic
• 3 tablespoons unsalted butter
• 5 tablespoons all-purpose flour
• 5 cups milk
• 1 bay leaf (not California)
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1/8 teaspoon white pepper

For assembling lasagne

• 1 lb fresh mozzarella, coarsely grated (4 cups)
• 1 cup finely grated Parmigiano-Reggiano (3 oz)
• Jon's lasagna noodles, or a box of no boil noodles

 

Have Mark make the filling:
Cook onion in butter in a deep 12-inch heavy skillet over moderate heat, stirring occasionally, until golden, about 10 minutes. Add squash, garlic, salt, and white pepper and cook, stirring occasionally, until squash is just tender, about 15 minutes. Remove from heat and stir in parsley, and sage. Cool filling. 

Have Jon make the noodles.  All I know about this is that the farm eggs were used the noodles were bright yellow.  You'll have to ask him the rest...

Make sauce while squash cooks:
Cook garlic in butter in a 3-quart heavy saucepan over moderately low heat, stirring, 1 minute. Whisk in flour and cook roux, whisking, 3 minutes. Add milk in a stream, whisking. Add bay leaf and bring to a boil, whisking constantly, then reduce heat and simmer, whisking occasionally, 10 minutes. Whisk in salt and white pepper and remove from heat. Discard bay leaf. (Cover surface of sauce with wax paper if not using immediately.) 

Assemble lasagne (and yes, we doubled the cheese):

Preheat oven to 425°F.

Toss cheeses together. Spread 1/2 cup sauce in a buttered 13- by 9- by 2-inch glass baking dish (or other shallow 3-quart baking dish) and cover with 3 pasta sheets, leaving spaces between sheets. Spread with 2/3 cup sauce and one third of filling, then sprinkle with a heaping 1/2 cup cheese. Repeat layering 2 more times, beginning with pasta sheets and ending with cheese. Top with remaining 3 pasta sheets, remaining sauce, and remaining cheese. 

Tightly cover baking dish with buttered foil and bake lasagne in middle of oven 30 minutes. Remove foil and and bake (we broiled!) until golden and bubbling, 10 to 15 minutes more.  Let lasagne stand 15 to 20 minutes before serving. Or 10 minutes if you can't wait.

Pizza Party!

Snacking is always an integral part of any football game, but when the Bears lose the food takes on a newfound import. I ate Chinese leftovers from Friendship while Bridget brunched with some family ladies. By early in the 2nd half, it became clear that the food I was making had to kick ass since the Bears wouldn't be doing any of that.

Now, I've been baking a bunch lately-- just trying to get good crumb from my loaves of bread and attempting to come up with a pizza crust that's both chewy and crisp in all the right ways. Some of my trials have been quite good, some have been fed mostly to Millie. We have lots of cookbooks and so I finally swallowed my pride and turned to a recipe for "basic pizza dough" out of Stephanie Izard's new Girl In the Kitchen.

I took Bridgie to a birthday dinner in February to Izard's Girl & the Goat, and we were treated like royalty: kitchen two-top where the chefs all chatted us up, fed us complimentary tastes, Stephanie said "Hi!" and "Happy Birthday!" to Bridge, and the wine flowed like...well, wine. So I turn to Steph for a good dough because she seems like a great gal.

Basic Pizza Dough

3/4 cup warm water
2 1/2 tsp dry yeast
1/4 cup dry white wine
1 tbsp olive oil
1 tbsp honey
1 tsp salt
3 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1/4 cup stone ground cornmeal (not necessary)

Combine water, yeast, and wine in a large bowl and stir vigorously until yeast dissolves and mixture begins to bubble.

Add salt, olive oil, and honey until fully combined.

Add 1 cup of flour and mix with a wooden spoon (or dough hook) until it's a wet, loose batter.

Add 2 more cups of flour slowly until you can work the dough by hand (without getting super sticky hands). Knead for about 10 mins until smooth and firm. Form a loose round and rub with olive oil. Set round in a glass or wooden bowl and cover with a kitchen towel for about an hour, until doubled in size.

Pound down and knead for another few minutes. Roll out into a sheet and then...this is crucial, let it PROOF for 2 hours. The thin sheet of dough should once again double in size after this 2 hour proofing process.

Finally, simply roll this large buncha dough into one large round (or 4 personal pizza-sized rounds (only if you read enough books, kiddo). Sprinkle your stone or mat with cornmeal and preheat for 30 minutes. This preheating is key so the bottom of your crust get crisp as quick as top and inner dough cook up.

Put your pie on a stone or mat and load into the hottest oven you can -- I used a silicone pizza mat on top of a stone in a 550+ oven.

Oh yeah, you need to put stuff onto your p'zone!

Put whatever you want on there! Make an awesome red sauce and cook some sausage and toss that with some fresh basil. Do mushrooms and then put cheese on there. Whatever. Here, though, is what I did with this fashionably local and organic treat...

White Balsamic Black Mission Fig, Prosciutto, Melted Onion and Three Cheese Pizza

Lightly pan fry prosciutto or bacon-- set aside
Sprinkle a handful of figs with a capful of white balsamic
Handfuls each of Bleu Cheese, Mozz and Parm
Melt 3 small onions or 1 large onion for 20 mins on med-high heat  (I use some sugar or cola about 5 mins in)

Sprinkle and layer over rolled out dough and bake at a HIGH temp for 10 mins (or 15 for lesser oven temps)  

****We have a badass 1982 Kenmore double-oven that bakes at 550+ degrees****

...and an Early-Fall Stew

Two weeks ago we were complaining that our A/C was broken and dug out the extra fans from the closet.  This morning I was digging around for my coat.  Fall has arrived quickly this year.  I still have to reset my brain, but in general Mark and I love the fall.  To welcome in the cooler weather, we made a hearty – but not too hearty -- stew the other night.  

White Coq au Vin

2 pounds chicken thighs – we trimmed most of the skin off

1 jar pearl onions (the recipe called for frozen, which I couldn’t find)

1 8 oz package baby bella mushrooms

3oz prosciutto, minced

3-4 minced garlic cloves

¾ teaspoon dried tarragon

¼ cup flour

1 cup dry white wine

2 cups chicken broth

1 can artichoke hearts

1 ½ pounds baby yellow potatoes

Mark trimmed up the thighs and seasoned them with salt and pepper.  We heated some olive oil in a deep pan and browned the chicken for a few minutes on each side.  Set those aside.   

Add a little more olive oil and add the onions, scrapping up the good bits from the bottom of the pan.  After they get soft, put them aside with the chicken.

Add a little more oil and sauté the mushrooms until they get brown and season with salt and pepper.  Then  add the prosciutto, garlic and tarragon and stir around for about one minute or so.   

Dump in the flour, then pour in the wine and broth.  Now time to add the chicken and onions back in the pot along with the artichoke and potatoes.  This is the part of the recipe that gets weird, in my opinion.  It says to bring to a boil and then simmer for 15 minutes.  Our potatoes were nowhere near soft enough after 15 minutes, and we figured the longer the better anyway, so we simmered our stew for 45 minutes. 

Mark has taken over spaetzle duties in our house.  He whipped up a batch.  Pour the stew on top and eat!

                                          (And yes, I see that spaetzle could look like brains...)

A Perfect Summer Soup

I am pretty bummed that our first trip to the outdoor farmer’s market this year happened just last week.  The upside of our delayed farmer’s marketing is that tomatoes are perfect now -- they really can’t be compared to the things that call themselves tomatoes the rest of the year. 

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Last year we stumbled across some sun gold tomato beauties at the Green City Market and whipped up Thomas Keller’s recipe for Sun Gold Tomato Gazpacho from Ad Hoc at Home.  This is not the first time we’ve posted about this cook book and probably will not be the past – this book is the best.  Unlike most of the recipes in Ad Hoc at Home, this soup comes together really quickly and does not get every pot in your kitchen dirty. 

With tomatoes being as awesome as they are right now, we had this gazpacho on the brain when we stopped by the market the other day.  It is definitely worthy of a post.

Sun Gold Gazpacho, the Perfect Summer Soup

1 cup cold water

2 garlic cloves, peeled and smashed

¼ cup coarsely chopped onion

2 lbs sun gold tomatoes, we used two heaping cartons and called it a day, stemmed and cut in half

1 cucumber, peeled and cut in half lengthwise with seeds scooped out

1 large yellow pepper, but in coarse pieces

1 large red bell pepper (honestly, half of one will do the trick)

1 T sherry vinegar, then maybe just a splash more

½ tsp smoky paprika

¾ - 1 cup olive oil

Handful of chives, diced

Put the water in a big bowl and add the garlic and onion.  Get the tomatoes ready if they are not already and add all but one cup to the bowl with any juices leftover on the cutting board.  Save that cup you set aside for garnish.

Slice half that cuc into half moon shapes and toss into the bowl.  Save the other half for garnish.  Toss the coarsely cut yellow pepper into the bowl too. 

Let these guys hang out for five minutes, stirring around once or twice.  Get the garnishes ready if you haven’t yet.  Dice up the chives, finely dice the red pepper and the other half of the cucumber.  Put the garnishes in the fridge.

Now back to the veggies in their bowl of water.  Pour the whole thing into your blender.  Or food processor if you want a mess.  Keller calls for a Vita Mix, which I am sure is very awesome, but who has that?

Blend it all up.  Strain through a fine-meshed strainer.  You will probably have to do that in batches since the tomato skins get caught and you end up pushing the concoction through.  Rinse out the blender.  Toss the strained soup back in and add the paprika, sherry vinegar and some salt and pepper (Keller calls for white pepper, which I did not have so I used black). While blending, slowly start pouring the oil in until the soup gets “velvety.” 

Add more vinegar or paprika, salt or pepper if you think it needs it.  Garnish with your collection of garnishes and voila!  Perfect with a grilled sandwich of prosciutto, fontina, goat cheese and basil.

Arancini: The Noble 10th Century Sicilian Treat That Forced Me From an Early Blog Retirement

There are but a few places I've made a consistent habit of visitng throughout the past 10 or so years of living in Chicago. Bridget and I have definitely added to that list which once seemed only to include Hot Doug's, Kuma's, Cafe Central, Borinquen, the Flying Chicken and Aloha Grill (to get a rather infrequent Hawaiian plate-lunch fix). Of those, I can only claim to have discovered the Flying Chicken's Colombian-style Pollo a La Brasa (roasted chicken) I love so dearly. It moved from Lincoln Ave to 3402 W Montrose in Albany Park a few years ago but I continue to make the trip. Anyway, go there and get 1 of everything to go.

Strangely, almost every other place I crave and cannot imagine living without came from Eric Kraus, close friend of my brother Brian and later myself. We worked together for years and our lunch options got creative lest they get monotonous. We mourned the closing of Randolph St.'s strange, giant, sterile, and short-lived "Market" as we simply called it: an Italian grocer that had some choice hot grilled food and a ridiculous salad bar--the source from which I developed my true, lasting love affair with hard-boiled eggs simply but heavily salted and peppered. Eric loved the subsequent car rides, I know.

Another, more important Italian place that Eric introduced me to was Bari. Now I've heard the hubbub about Graziano's, but I continue to give my quick and convenient dinner-shopping and sandwich business to Bari. This place is no flash in the pan and so I feel as though I can give them my heart completely and not live in fear of their doors closing. The barese sausage, its casing filled with basil and garlic, is almost too flavorful to eat regularly. Their selection of fresh pasta, cheese, and cured meats remains second to none, in my opinion. I am half italian, but I never ate prosciutto, salami, or romano/parmesan cheeses like it was my job until about 8 years ago when I first walked into Bari for an italian sub. I rarely eat the sandwiches anymore, but their meatball with provolone or the sausage with sweet are both revelations. The meatballs, geniously sliced in half for easier face-jamming, are tucked into a slightly crusty but warm bread with marinara and thinly sliced provolone...see below.

Anyway, two doors west of Bari is D'Amato's Bakery, which supplies a lot of area restaurants with French and Italian loaves, rounds, etc. This, of course, is also where Bari sources the breads for their fine sammies. They also have an amazing selection of focaccia's and pizzas as well as sweets (cherry slices, cannoli) that are well worth checking into. Anyhow, I began heading into D'Amato's after Bari as part of my dinner shopping ritual-- rather Euro of me, to grab fresh things I intend to cook and enjoy that night, rather than hitting Strack or Costco for frozen things or skids of Ragu sauce. One fateful day at D'Amato's I decided to try what looked to be an oversized scotch egg or some bastardization of an empenada-- of course, it was an arancini filled with beef and peas. The arancini is essentially a risotto ball stuffed with any number of things-- most typically you will find beef or spinach and cheese-- and then rolled in bread cumbs and lightly fried. The resultant crust is more soft n' spongy than KFCextracrispy. Bridget and I have taken to grabbing a couple of these from D'Amato's every few months and have proceeded to serve them to (and melt the faces of) not a small number of dinner guests. Based on our love of these treats, we decided to give them a whirl and I'm happy to report that it was a smashing success and that they will become an integral part of our Italian repertoire. Here, with pictures, is the recipe for Arancini. Keep in mind that you can stuff the risotto with whatever meats or veggies or cheeses your little heart desires. Also bear in mind that this is rather time-consuming and labor-intensive-- so make sure you're armed to the teeth with Barolo or beer.

Ingredients:

2 Tblsp butter
olive oil
2 cups arborio (sp?) rice
6-8 cups water or chicken broth
1/2 cup white wine
1 onion, diced
3 cloves garlic, diced
3/4 cup grated parm
2 eggs, beaten

Breadcrumbs

Optional Fillings:

Ground Beef & Peas

Spinach & Cheese (cubed Mozz or Ricotta)

Mushrooms

Sausage

Basil

Prosciutto

Here is our spread:

Instructions:

Get water simmering over med-high heat. (This will be added to risotto in another pot but needs to be hot)

Heat oil and butter and saute onions and garlic together for a few minutes, until transluscent and fragrant.

Add some salt and pepper.

Add rice and stir around until toasty, about two minutes.

Rice toasting with sauteed onion and garlic:

Add wine and stir until mostly absorbed.

Add water/broth a ladle full at a time, stirring until the rice absorbs it before adding more. You may not need all the liquid, so start testing doneness as you cook.

Once risotto is done, transfer to a bowl to cool for 15 minutes or so.

Stir in cheese and beaten eggs once risotto is cool. Let cool some more in fridge until ready to form into balls.

Heat oil in a pan to 375 degrees (med-high)

Once you're ready to do the dirtywork, get your breadcrumbs in a bowl.

Dirtywork:

Form sticky risotto into your palm and load with any desired fillings, covering filling with more risotto and forming a ball. This doesn't need to be an exact science: some of ours were golfball-sized and others baseballs. Some filling was completely hidden inside while others resembled sloppy Lush bath bombs with spinach hanging out or sausage dotting the exterior. The important thing is to cover as much of the exterior with risotto, as that creates the glue to hold the breadcrumbs.

Cover risotto balls with breadcrumbs (panko works though we enjoyed italian-style) and drop into hot oil, turning every few minutes or until golden brown.

Drain excess oil when done, frying arancini in small batches

Once finished, serve with any sauce that sounds good with your particular brand of arancini.

Here is a shot of me preparing my famous red sauce, but since I have no actual recipe written that will have to wait for another day...

Enjoy! We certainly hope your arancini experience turns out-- but if it doesn't please know that you're always welcome to come over to our place and sit down to a piping hot plate of this: