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.

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.

203: Butternut Squash Quick Bread

My squash bread came from this recipe, but, to be fair, was initiated by a desire to make this one from Cook's Illustrated. But I didn't have time to cook down a squash puree into squash butter, or the nuts or cream cheese to make it right. Another time.

As it was this turned out nicely- with a little caveat or two. The top (you can see above) is pale and a little underdone, as I threw in another pan, a little too close, to multitask a warm oven. And while waiting for that part to brown later I burnt the bottom (which was cut off in the pic above). It averages out, right? Like fish sticks?

My only adjustments were to use walnut oil in lieu of canola, and then that thing where I'm braindead and accidentally add a tsp of chili powder instead of nutmeg, and then say eff it and also add the nutmeg. No one noticed. In fact, it probably tasted better.

For all the fuss about baking being a science (which it is, don't get me wrong), I find quickbreads super forgiving. This is still tasty. I left my for work having taken a slice for a snack, and came back to find more than half gone- the (much appreciated) work of my roommates.

Eff pumpkins, I'm all about squash in the fall.

194: Roasted Veggie Salad

Cop out? Kinda. I'd say to really be a cop out it'd be an automatic home run, and I did have some issues with how it turned out, so there's something to talk about here.

Overall it was about a half a head of lettuce and about 3/4 cup of roasted veggies. And two scallions sliced thin for a little more oniony-ness. The dressing was just oil, vinegar, sage and pepper. I tried to make up for the lack of herb flavor from the roasted veggies themselves by adding some chopped sage to this, but it still didn't come through. I'd even left it to steep overnight- maybe I'd needed to heat the oil for it to infuse?

My standard practice of making my dressing uber vinegary didn't work well here, either. It was nice to have some contrasting acidic bite, but it was just a little too much.

Tasty salad, but a little refinement needed.

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.

Delivery 20

Butternut Winter Squash - 1

Turnips - 2

Lettuce - 2 heads Lettuce Smettuce, went for another bunch of radishes again

Broccoli - 1

Radish - 1 bunch

Potatoes - 2 pounds

Garlic - 2 heads

Kohlrabi - 1 bunch

Sage - 1 bunch

Carrots - 1 pound

Hot Peppers - Jalapenos

Cauliflower - 1

I have a bit of a crazyplan this week, just to chop everything up and roast it with the sage. But then I don't have enough sheet trays/oven space/etc.

Turnips

Kinda giant turnips this week. Here's a soup. Fritters with potato and scallions. Frittata. Simple roast.

Cauliflower

Heyyy I got one that wasn't moldy this time! Faux cous cous looks neat (and I love excuses to use the food processor). Spicy roasty cauliflower steaks. Creamy curried soup. And a curry with potatoes.

Jalapenos

Part of the reason I was able to build up so many habaneros for that jelly was they were too spicy to use in normal dishes. Happy to have a few milder everyday peppers to just use as needed.

Garlic

Every time I look at this thing, I just keep thinking of Eraserhead. I'm sorry if that's now stuck in your head. I use garlic all the time, but don't want to just toss this in with a bunch of other flavors. One of my favorite things about the CSA is subtly but profoundly different ingredients taste when they're this fresh. Most likely this will just get roasted and spread on bread like butter.

Butternut Squash

Yay! Butternut squash is one of those foods I adore, but don't order it at restaurants as it's a borderline food. It can be sweet or savory, and I want none of the sweet. Or rather, additional sweet. So no cinnamon or maple syrup please, the squash brings enough of that to the party as is. Roasted squash soup. I have my own favorite soup recipe with rosemary and onions, may try that out. These wontons sound neat, if a little sweet.

Potatoes

Salad with salmon. Pizza dough. First batch that appear to have been cleaned before sending.

Carrots

Roasted carrots and avocado salad. Carrot cake pancakes. Carrots with potatoes and dill. Spoon bread.

Sage

Crispy sage. Pizza with butternut squash. If I didn't still have pate in the freezer I'd make that again.

Radishes

There was a lot of sage (and I mean a lot) on the swap table today, but thankfully my radish-hating friend left an extra bunch for me to swap out. It's more than a little ridiculous that I traded two heads of lettuce for a baby bunch of these radishes (especially when I'm on a salad kick lately), but it happened. Pickles, with cheese and chives on bread, or just with butter and salt. Or I'll just make a bunch of radish roses, and throw them at people.

Broccoli

Broccoli grilled cheese (healthy wha?). Hummus with white beans. Chilled soup (bonus for dill, which I still have from last week).

Kohlrabi

Salad with apples. Slaw with apples. Slaw with turnips.