Wednesday, March 18, 2009

Produce & recipes, week two!



The list this week is a bit more challenging for me. I love peppers, but P absolutely doesn't like them at all. I am still not sure what I will do with those. I like celery, but I was unsure of how to create a whole side dish out of it. I might make cream of celery soup (sub the cream for almond or soy milk) so I bought a celery root, which incidentally is one ugly root!

I have some definite recipes I am making this week and then I'll wing it at the end. I have a few ideas.

Again, we'll have the fruit for snacks and dessert.

Produce box:
Snap Peas
Red Thumb Fingerling Potatoes
Broccoli
Rainbow Chard
Hass Avocados
Red Bell Peppers
Red Cherry Tomatoes
Celery
Romaine
Lettuce
Strawberries
Navel Oranges
Cameo Apples
Mangos

Here is our menu:

Rainbow chard with raisins, pine nuts, and hard boiled eggs and served over brown rice:

Repeat of last week's romaine topped with stir fried shrimp and snow peas (snap peas this week). We used romaine for the greens, instead of watercress and arugula. I also candied the walnuts (recipe at bottom of note), and tossed the greens in a little olive oil & white wine vinegar before adding the toppings. Vegans could sub tofu for the shrimp. That recipe was a HIT!

Chilled soba noodles with snap peas and tofu or shrimp. The reviewers on epicurious suggested that you avoid cooking the dressing, just whip together and toss all ingredients at the end:

Stir-fried suagar snap peas & cherry tomatoes, roasted rosemary fingerling potatoes and veggie burgers or baked true cod. Last week, we baked fresh true cod in lemon juice, olive oil, lemon zest, salt and paprika. It was awesome! I got it fresh from Uwajimaya and it was only $7.99 a pound. yum.


Hmmmm. Now for the broccoli, peppers and celery.

One dish I thought might be interesting is to make quinoa and then create a fried rice-type dish with the rest of the veggies and the quinoa. It would probably be yummy with mango mixed in. I have never done this with quinoa, but I am guessing it will work.

If I don't do that, I will make celery soup, roasted red peppers for a side dish and open faced broccoli melts (using sheeps' milk cheese). The open faced broccoli sandwiches come from Moosewood's Simple Suppers, my favorite vegetarian cookbook. Below is a recipe for roasting the broccoli, which might be really good prior to melting a big slab of cheese on it. Otherwise, I just saute it in a pan with a little spray oil and seas salt, so it gets a little crispy while it softens.


BTW the lacinato kale salad and the shimp salad from last week were everyone's favorites. The greens from the farms are absolutely incredible.

Recipe for candied walnuts, which I tripled so that we had plenty (found on the web):

1/4 cup nuts
1 T sugar
1/4 t salt
1 t walnut or olive oil
preheat oven to 350
toast nuts in oven, about 5 min, or until fragrant.
while nuts toast, in a small bowl, stir together sugar, salt, oil.toss toasted nuts in sugar mixutre and stir.
heat small skillet on med heat, add nuts & sugar mixture, stirring regularly until sugar caramelizes, abt 5 min.
Cool on parchment paper.

No comments: