Winning Produce

My most recent haul from the CSA brought in lots of  the usual goodies - tomatoes, Thai and Italian basils, zucchini, squash, eggplant, potatoes, garlic and peppers.  

This garlic really is phenomenal - I'm planning to roast a head of it to make some garlic butter - perhaps I'll freeze that to bring me the flavors in the winter.

This week also brought, of course, more peaches!  Every week I keep looking at them, thinking "I'll try a new recipe with the peaches this week."  And every week, I simply cut them up and eat them just as they are.  They've been wonderful with no additions at all.

This week I also got a few more tomatoes, and combined them with a couple more for a slow roast.  I simply cut them in half, sprinkled them with olive oil, salt, a little thyme and a smidgen of sugar and put them in a hot roasting oven.  Nigella Lawson's Nigella Express includes a recipe for what she calls "Moonblush Tomatoes" that she puts in a very hot oven right before bed, and then turns off the oven and leaves the tomatoes in the oven overnight as it cools.  I'm a fan of her methods, and while I toy with the ratios in her recipe, it offers a nice flavor profile.

These tomatoes are slightly roasted, and get just a bit wrinkly as the flavors are concentrated.  I love eating them on their own, but they also make great additions to salads, and are wonderful sauteed a bit and put over pasta.  This is just a generally fantastic way to enjoy some tomatoes!

Vegetable Parade

Last Wednesday evening, I was supposed to be three different places at 5:30, one of which was picking up my vegetables. I wasn’t going to skip that. On my way to pick up my CSA vegetables, I must have been distracted by the other places I should be…I’ll also blame the intense heat for my absent-mindedness. I didn’t go the usual way to the pick-up point, and instead headed directly home from work. Knowing enough about the area that I could get there, even if in a round-about way, I headed up the highway. When I got there, I realized that way, while less scenic, was much quicker…apparently my brain was working at a higher level than I realized!

The haul for the sixth week of my CSA engagement presented the first real bag chock full of vegetables. I came home with small potatoes, more eggplant, some delicious garlic, additional Italian basil, a cucumber, a yellow squash and a zucchini! I can’t wait to get to eating these. They smell marvelous and, being so fresh and yummy, require little effort to be delicious.

A Slice of Yum

Last night, I got home a little late from my class, but had a quick dinner plan in mind. I’d bought a Maryland-style crab cake at the grocery store, and had a zucchini and a yellow squash in the fridge. Perfect for a quick and tasty meal!

I turned on the oven for the crab (I bake them) and got out my benriner slicer. I quickly peeled the veggies, though not perfectly. After all, a little skin adds color! I sliced the squash onto a little plate. At this point, I put the crab cake in the oven to bake, which only takes about 15 minutes. Then I continued by slicing the zucchini.

PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT: If your slicer comes with one of those handy-dandy slicing guards, when your zucchini cylinder is less than an inch tall, USE IT. I sliced my thumb open on the slicer last night. Ouch. Nothing dire, but I spent so much time going back and forth to the bathroom to clean it and the stove to cook, that I took no pictures of this meal.

I melted a tablespoon of salted butter in a skillet, then tossed in the veggie slices and let them cook. As they start to smell yummy, flip them in the pan (like on TV…do a quick scoop with the pan to flip the slices into the air!). You can also use a spatula.

After a few minutes, I added some salt and freshly ground pepper, and continued to toss and stir the veggies. When the crab cake had been in the oven for 10 minutes, I added a very thin slice of butter on top of it, just for moisture.

In about 15 minutes, my dinner was done – and I ate the entire squash and the entire zucchini. Hooray for veggies!