230: Smashed Celeriac

I can't help but be a fan of the difficult things. It probably says a lot about my character/particular brand of crazy that when someone says something is ugly or weird or hard I'm automatically disposed to like it that much more. I was always more of an Avid person than a Final Cut person, for one. 

I love Brussels sprouts and kohlrabi and I really want to like celeriac root- despite (because?) of its ugliness. A celery flavor without the annoying stringiness. I used this recipe from Jaime Oliver. Didn't let it go quite as long as I should've- right now I'm using pans with makeshift tin foil lids so it's hard to keep moisture in- but definitely an easy, warm, comforting dish.

228: Kohlrabi Carrot Soup

Not a pretty soup, but a sweet and tasty one. I sort of used this recipe from Eat, Love and Be Happy! When skimming it seemed fine, but upon the reread I was generally confused as to what I was supposed to do, so I did my own thing.

Ingredients:

2 kohlrabi
3 carrots
1 head garlic
1 onion, diced
2 ribs celery, diced
~ sage, thyme, parsley
~ chiken stock
~ salt, pepper, olive oil

I peeled, cut into chunks, and roasted the kohlrabi and carrots until soft and browned. I also chopped the top of the garlic off the head, drizzled a little olive oil and wrapped in foil. That was also roasted until soft.

Meanwhile, I diced my onions and celery and started those in a pot with a little olive oil and salt. Once they got soft, and the onions started to brown, I added in the rest of the ingredients. The chicken stock was added until it just covered (I like my soups full of "stuff", not super brothy), and I let that simmer for a while, until the flavors had a chance to mingle and the herbs had some time to do their thing. Tasting, adjusting seasoning as necessary.

Roasting the kohlrabi and carrots brought out their sweetness, which extended out into the soup. Last night it seemed unpleasantly sweet, but I dug it a lot more for lunch. Next time I'd probably add roasted potatoes, but I totally forgot until it was too late to prep them.

226: Herb Butter Roasted Potatoes

Sometimes it's really good to just cook something, like potatoes, that you don't have a recipe in mind for. While I was roasting (off share) sweet potatoes, I threw a few potatoes on the other rack. I figured at worst they could hang out in the fridge until a day I was too lazy/busy to cook. And that's what happened. 

After getting my hair cut and doing my weekly extra ingredient shopping trip (an expensive one, though a good $10 was stock alone) I got home with just enough energy to eat a bowl of yogurt and whip this up. 

I thickly sliced the cooked and cooked potatoes, then sauteed them for a bit in herb butter. I meant to post about the herb butter but never got around to it- to the best of my recollection it had parsley, thyme, dill, mint, maybe some basil and cilantro. I added a bit of pepper and way too much salt, so I'm forced to use it sparingly. 

The results were perfect for a cold day, and a more than good reason to just throw something extra into the oven whenever it's on.

213: Roasted Garlic Toast (semi-fancy version)

This is more like it. My last attempt at garlic on toast was lame, I'll admit. I have a cabinet at work that's a decent mini-pantry: some vinegar, salt, pepper, sriracha, but definitely not enough to really pimp out a piece of toast. At home there are more toys to play with. AND the last of the lovely sourdough I got from She Wolf Bakery (remember parsley on toast? yay for freezing bread).

I roasted my garlic with a little olive oil, salt, and thyme, wrapped up in aluminum foil. Once it was soft, I squeezed it out onto the bread, topped with the thyme, salt, pepper, red pepper flake and olive oil.

The roasted garlic was lovely and sweet, that raw bite totally mellowed. I will say though, when I've used cloves in other dishes, they've smelled and tasted more garlicy than ones from the supermarket. Better quality, much less bitter.

Here's the deliciousness, which could have more craziness done to it with cheese, butter, and...bacon? No, I doubt I'll get more crazy than this.

Also, disclaimer: this was actually the second piece of toast, and the second head of garlic I consumed in such a fashion that night. Were you aware that while metabolizing garlic your sweat can smell a little garlicy too? It's not just garlic breath, it'll come out through your pores! Science!

209: Kale Salad with Mushrooms and Butternut Squash

New greens mixed with last week’s leftovers. You may remember the mushrooms and butternut squash from such dishes as this pizza, though honestly, I liked the combination better here. As I mentioned there the squash is so sweet, it needs something earthy and bitter like the kale to balance that out. No dressing, per se, just a little oil. Apparently I learned a lesson (!!) from my roasted veggie salad.

I needed to cut my kale a little finer (I also need to sharpen my knife), but overall a lovely lunch side considering I threw it together in about 5-10 minutes before heading off to work.

Delivery 21

I'm very much behind on this post, apologies. Many recipes are pulled from previous posts.

Potatoes - 2 pounds

Carrots - 1 pound 

Chiogga Beets - 1 pound

Garlic - 2 heads

Lacinato Kale - 1 bunch

Mustard Greens - 1 bunch

Radishes - 1 bunch

Thyme - 1 bunch

Romanesco Cauliflower - 1 head

Mustard Greens

Salads are tempting, but it's hard for me to turn down an Indian dish.

Chiogga Beets

Will take a picture of this pretties when I actually cook them, but in an effort to save plastic I didn't want to tear open the bag. They have bag of 15 lbs of beets for sale from my CSA. It's bad how tempted I am. Definitely want to preserve the color on these, so will likely use one of these recipes from the kitchn. Here are more raw beet recipes.

Rainbow Carrots

Raw salad to showcase the colors. Roasted with honey ginger butter. Salad with walnuts and radishes.

Potatoes

Roasted (bonus for rainbow carrots).

Radishes

Mango and radish salad. Radish curry. Oh man, maybe I'll actually make this crazy crazy bread.

Romanesco Cauliflower

Really want a recipe that keeps the cauliflower looking pretty, so a roast seems ideal.

Thyme

Roasting herb. Will throw it in where I can. Maybe I'll try drying it out? I can never use these things up in time.

Garlic

Used in other recipes, most likely. Can't afford to be precious.

Dinosaur Kale

All the salads, please. Here's one with balsamic vinegar and pine nuts. One with ricotta. Super simple with breadcrumbs and garlic.

204: Squash and Mushroom Pizza

Or maybe it's some sort of squash and mushroom flatbread. The left slice/pizza has pecorino, the right does not. I preferred the sans-cheese, but it also had mas-mushroom, so the reason is a bit of a toss-up.

I roasted my squash, sliced, in an oven (at 350ish) until soft. I had been simply dressed with a little olive oil and salt.

The mushrooms were sliced and sauteed with garlic, lots of sage, lots of thyme and lots of olive oil. I'd probably up the herbs were I to do it again- or, hell, toss those herbs on the pizza. They were at a good level on the mushrooms by themselves, but I forgot to take into account the gestalt with squash and dough.

The combination was lovely, though the squash was (as it is) on the sweet side. Leftovers will have the important addition of sriracha to take the edge off.

193: Roasted Veggies

So I didn't entirely enact the crazy plan I mentioned in my delivery post, but close. I took a little bit of a number of veggies from this week (butternut squash, potatoes, carrots, and turnips) and a few things that were not (onions, garlic), and tossed those with olive oil, salt, thyme and chopped sage.

Roasted them for ages (stirring every 15 minutes or so), and would've kept it going longer had my knife skills been better and my bits actually chopped the same size. As it is there's a good bit of browning and caramelized sweetness (the turnips are surprisingly sweet), but not the crispy crust you can achieve leaving them in longer.

I thought I'd added a ton of herbage, but I forget some of these things will just fall off in the cooking/stirring process. They're still lovely eaten as is, but would be good with some pasta, quinoa or another preparation I'll have for you all soon.

Leftovers: Potato Pancakes

I didn't egg these potato pancakes up on first making, but of course they're very very good for breakfast.

Also after hanging out in the fridge for a day or so, they're firm enough to pop in the toasted to easily reheat. The one above I did in a pan, not as burnt as it looks.

166: Potato Pancakes

In theory I followed this recipe, but in actuality something else was going on in my head, as I par boiled the potatoes before grating. They're more like mashed potato pancakes- not a bad thing. I added parsley and a little thyme, fried up the first batch, and for the second added a little more salt (the first were under seasoned) and some smoked paprika.

Really lovely, light and fluffy. These potatoes ate actually from two weeks ago, so I may try this again the legit way, grated raw.

Delivery 17

Red Leaf Lettuce-2 heads Still having nightmares about the lettuce from the beginning of the season, so I switched out for more tomatillos

Mizuna-1 bunch

Mustard Greens-1 bunch

Radish-1 bunch

Potatoes-2 pounds

Cabbage-1 head

Tomatillos-10

Thyme-1 bunch

Rainbow Carrots-1 bunch

Hot Peppers - Habanero - take if you like

Ancho Peppers- 2

Sweet Peppers-2

Mustard Greens

The salad I made last week was just what I needed, so I'd like to do another raw preparation. Here are a few options.

Potatoes

A mix of red and white potatoes...and I still have some potatoes from last week that haven't found a recipe home. My time has been crazy limited lately, so I have a feeling that most things will probably be roasted/boiled. One of the mustard green recipes uses them. Here are some leftover recipes from other weeks: potato cake (with parsley), pancake, roasted (with cabbage), smashed (with cabbage).

Peppers

Rainbow of peppers! Bell, what they say is ancho (ancho is a dried poblano), cubanelle and habenero. Here's a frittata (bonus for potato). I may just roast them all and mix them with some kind of dressing.

Rainbow Carrots

Rainbow of carrots, too! I'm interested to see if the different colors taste different. Simple raw and roasted preparations are in order.

Cabbage

So...I still have that cabbage from two weeks ago. It's looking not-so-great. Can we just agree that I'll get to this when I get to this? But my perennial salad suggestion will hopefully not be the new pepper jelly (i.e. a recipe that I keep mentioning but never actually do)- it sounds lovely, but the "salt then let it sit for a few hours" gives me pause. When am I home for a few hours and then not on my way to bed?

It's a natural pairing with potatoes- here are some options: Ethiopian, Bolivian, more fried cakes, a few Indian preparations.

Broccoli

Makeshift "head" of broccoli...not sure it's worth making something dedicated out of this. I'm always in need of something simple (and healthy) to eat after interning on weekend, may just snack on these raw.

Tomatillos

These were smelling a bit musty, so as soon as I got home I washed and pureed. Will pick up some cheesecloth on the way home to strain out the juice for a tart. Or if not a tart, at least the curd portion of that tart. Any leftovers & pulp will probably be frozen/used in some kind of meat braise.

Thyme

Roasting herbage. Or biscuits, or popovers.

Radishes

Cherrette and one breakfast. Simple toast, salad (bonus for carrots), sandwich with herb butter, slaw with broccoli and carrot (technically daikon but I'd try it with regular).

Mizuna

Oh heeyyy Mizuna, long time no see. This post mentions an easy prep with potatoes, here's an insanely easy salad (hot garlic dressing), and here's a post on serious eats about it.

147: Herb Scrambled Eggs and 148: Smoky Chard Stems

It's hard for me to make a simple breakfast, or I can, but need bread. Without it I'm a little lost. Also the daylight situation in my kitchen in the mornings is throwing off my photos.

Eggs were easy- wanted to use up herbage, so I chopped up some sage and thyme. Eggs in a pan with (too much health-wise, enough delicious-wise) oil and butter, started the eggs, then tossed in the herbs soon after. My scrambles tend to be on the stove for less than a minute, product of a love of soft eggs and a super hot burner.

Accompaniment was a little harder. I decided on a quick saute of chard stems. Started some onion petals in a pan with oil, cooked until they were getting soft, then turned up the heat and threw in the chard stems (thick part had been cut in half). Kept stirring so they wouldn't stick, then tossed in a little smoked paprika towards the end for good measure.

The eggs were delicious. Not completely sold on the stems. They're fibrous and a little hard to eat. Flavors were good though.

134: Cabbage and Onion Marmalade V2

I tried that cabbage and onion marmalade again- as you can see it's a definite improvement.

Differences:
- Shredded the cabbage on a box grater: much smaller pieces cooked down a lot faster. Kind of made a mess, though cutting it by myself wasn't terribly clean either
- Used smaller onions: not sure how much of a difference this made, but it meant smaller onion slices, which also should've cooked down faster
- Cooked it in my dutch oven: the lid to the pot I used last time broke, so I was forced to bust out my huge Le Creuset. Definitely made a difference.
- Cut up capers/garlic with my food processor: a little silly for such a small amount, even with the mini-bowl, but helped that spread flavor around
- Cooked it longer: timers are only a tool, not the be and end of all cooking times. This needed another 15 minutes or so.

It's not quite as golden as the picture in the article, but I was having a bit of trouble with temperature management with my dutch oven as is, didn't want to push it burning (I had a few close calls). Also that picture has probably been doctored, or the topping browned in the oven while on the pizza.

Texture is much better, flavor is deeper. Yay! Unfortunately I'm out of pizza dough, and flour to make more, but it's great on toast, or, you know, in a bowl.

128 & 129: Provincal Potatoes

I had just planned on doing this recipe from Martha Stewart (left), but then I realized it was only going to use up like three of the potatoes I got in my share. Thought it'd be nice to try another provincial potatoes recipe, so I turned up this one (right) that was close- a few differences:

Martha's recipe had smaller pieces, more onions/garlic/olives/herbs. It also steamed the ingredients in a parchment pouch, whereas the second recipe called for roasting. There was a small amount of vinegar in the second recipe, as well as different herbs (which I didn't have, so I used rosemary and thyme, the better to compare them with).

The result? I didn't really like either.  Womp womp.

I would say Martha's recipe was more successful. I liked the smaller pieces of potato, more garlic and onions- generally more flavor. Steaming it in the pouch helped with that, the flavors infused more. The end result, though, was as expected: soft, steamed potatoes.

I had high hopes for the baked recipe. I'm a big fan of caramelization and the nice crispness roasted veggies can get when eaten straight out of the oven. I'm still trying to figure this oven out, though. As I've mentioned previously my standard cookie sheets just fit- as in they sit in the grooves for racks. I can't imagine that's good for even heating. So I used a smaller pan, which meant overcrowding and not a lot of browning, either.

Next time I'd probably use the recipe of the first with the method of the second. Smaller pieces mean a better surface area/size ratio, faster browning, and a happier Kelly.

120: Cabbage and Onion Marmalade Pizza (& Thyme Scrambled Eggs)

This is definitely not a summer dish. A lot of standing around over an oven. Of course it happened to collide with one of the muggier weekends we've had in a while, so it's a good thing I don't mind sweating in a kitchen...and that it turned out well.

I followed this recipe from the NY Times for the marmalade. Tried my hand at chopping up the cabbage, the second half of the head (to be used in another recipe) was more finely chopped than this. But it cooks for so long, I feel like the flavors were on, even if the texture wasn't quite there.

Next time I'll probably keep it going until everything actually melts down, but for my purposes this is great.

The pizza crust has been in my freezer for a bit (it's the same batch as I used for leftover Indian pizza), and as I hadn't thawed out any bread for labor day breakfast, I decided to pair pizza with my eggs.

The Times recipe talks about putting anchovies and olives on the pizza. I wasn't totally sold, as I only had my paste and olives tend to be too assertive for me to enjoy. I'm trying to expand my pallate a bit so I did a little experiment.

The top half of the pizza got a thin layer of anchovy paste, directly on the crust. Then the whole thing was topped with the marmalade. The olives got put on the right half of the pizza. The end result:  quadrants featuring all flavor variations. Make sense? Part of me wants to draw a diagram but hopefully I worded that well enough.

My favorite quadrant was with the olives and anchovy, followed by anchovy no olives. Not that the others were bad, but both of those toppings added a nice savory salty contrast to the sweet marmalade.

The scrambled eggs were just thyme, with a little salt and pepper. Breakfast of champs.

Delivery 12

Tomatoes - 4 plum, 4 slicers

Sungold Cherry Tomatoes - 1 basket

Peppers - 1 large bell

Bright Lights Swiss Chard - 1 bunch

Thyme - 1 bunch

Cabbage - 1 head

Collards - 1 bunch

Celery - 1 head

Shallots - 4

Hot Peppers - Serrano - 4

This is a tough one. Not so much the ingredients, but the fact that I was booked solid Tuesday after work so I took a late late lunch and picked it up myself as soon as they opened. It lived (as well it could) in the work fridge until I could take it home Wednesday. Hence the lateness.

Tomatoes

Someone once fortold I'd get tired of tomatoes. Clearly this person didn't know what they were talking about. I'd be happy eating them like handfruit, but as I'd like to push myself, here are some new things: roasty cherry, frittata, stuffed.


The cherries have been going bad very quickly (I actually remade that candied cherry tomato dish for the party, but ended up having to use tomatoes from the store, so haven't posted), so those were eaten up before I got them back to my place for pics.

Peppers

Ok, so the leftover pepper from 2 weeks ago was just a snack. I still have a few serranos from last week and a bell. Promise promise I'll try to make the jam this week. The vinegar certainly has had enough time by now to infuse.

Chard

Yay for some leafy. I guess I'm on a smitten recipe kick: white bean stew (bonus for shallots and thyme). Or that gratin all the kids are talking about. Or a different one.

Thyme  

Useful with tomato, and a few other dishes I have linked here. A little miffed as I'd actually bought thyme last week and still have some in my fridge. Womp womp.

Cabbage

It's been a bit, cabbage. Should I retry that curry? Or hey, there's an onion marmalade, pepper tart, or onion tart.

Collards

While the standard southern collard is tempting, as I've never made it, I know from experience I don't like it. Here's a veggie one, and one with farro. I think I'd like to try the first, as well as something that cooks it less, to get that flavor variation.

Celery

These are skinny, leafy celery. Pan cooked with tomatoes, risotto, braised with tomato and pancetta, chunky soup (and pesto!), simple braise, crunchy topped braise (bonus for thyme, shallot).
 
 

Shallots

Left these at work, whoops! Most likely will just integrate into other dishes (like the celery and tomato above). Not enough to do something super special. Or! scrambled eggs. Of course.

108: Potato and Chard Stem Gratin

I made bechamel! Yay! Used this recipe from the NY Times. Despite being carb heavy it actually doesn't seem to be that bad for you. The plan was actually to make two gratins, one with the stems and one the greens, but I ended up being too lazy to do that. Or I forgot how much greens cook down, and most of the recipes I saw called for a few bunches of chard.

The most interesting part of this recipe was making the bechamel, which wasn't as hard as I thought it might be. Just a lot of whisking, and keeping an eye on it (a little hard for me being a crazy multitasker when I'm cooking). I was pleasantly surprised how the whole thing came together, though, so warm and comforting and delicious.

I ended up with a few extra servings, which I froze in small ramekins lined with plastic wrap to get the sizing right. Hopefully they reheat well, it'll be nice to have them once it gets a little cooler.

Next time I'd probably throw some greens in there, even if the recipe didn't necessarily call for them.