Local Box Meal Plan: August 3-7

This week we’re getting anaheim and serrano peppers from Lundgren, blueberries from Berry Best, pea shoots, baby leeks from Animal Farm, a peach from Cooper Orchards, eggplant from Tecalote, lettuce from Bluebonnet Hydroponics, watermelon from Acadian, figs from Purple Goose Farm, basil from My Father’s Farm, and squash from Texas Natural.

So I’m making:

Lunch:

• Grilled squash and eggplant sandwich with a basil-chevre spread
• BLT on a pizza dough roll

Happy hour:

• Baked brie with figs and blueberries
• Watermelon and feta skewers

Dinner:

• Grilled chicken for Cory/salmon for me marinated in lemongrass and ginger, served with a pea shoot salad dressed in sesame oil, soy sauce, and toasted sesame seeds
• Chile verde (made with peppers and leeks)

Keep in mind that like figs, pea shoots are quite perishable and need to be used ASAP!

Local Box Meal Plan: July 27-31

Greenling, you’re throwing me a curveball this week. Eggplant, okra AND figs? Lots of my favorite textures there. =/ Luckily, I’ve got a plan!

This week, we’re getting figs, blueberries from Berry Best, watermelon from Acadian, peaches from Cooper Orchards, baby leeks from Animal Farm, crimini mushrooms from Kitchen Pride, eggplant from Tecalote, okra from Acadian, sweet Italian peppers from Lundgren, cucumbers from Acadian, lettuce from Bluebonnet Hydroponics, and herbs from Tecalote. So here’s what I’m making:

Breakfast:

• Fig waffles
• Omelette with cheddar, leeks and mushrooms

Lunches:

• Baba ganoush (making it just like I make hummus, as David Lebovitz’s didn’t really do it for me) with pita chips
• Green salad with cucumbers and herbs

Side dish:

• Baked popcorn okra

Dinners:

• Goat stew with italian peppers and okra
• Bison steaks with a blueberry sauce

Dessert:

• Grilled peaches with French vanilla ice cream

Do you have any “problem” veggies that come in your CSA box?

Watermelon Sorbet

We got a cute little watermelon in our Greenling box last week, and rather than cut it up and just eat the wedges, Cory urged me to make something with it. With the record temps here in Central Texas, there’s nothing more refreshing on hot days like this than sorbet.

Obviously if you have a watermelon without seeds, this would be easier, but if you put chunks through a food mill, it will puree the watermelon and leave the seeds behind. Not many people have a food mill, but I’ve found it to be one of my most useful and used items in my kitchen.

Adapted from Emeril Lagasse

Ingredients:

• 1/3 c. water
• 1/3 c. sugar
• 1 whole watermelon (Mine was probably 5 lbs. Not too big.)
• Juice of 1 lime
• Zest of 1/2 lime
• 1 tsp. very cold citrus vodka (I had citrus vodka already from the lemonade I made, but you could really use any vodka for this. I think they make watermelon vodka; that would be good.)

Directions:

• Heat the water and sugar in a saucepan over medium heat until the sugar is dissolved to make a simple syrup. My watermelon was quite sweet already, so I only used ~1/4 c. of simple syrup. If yours is less sweet, you may need more than 1/3 c. of simple syrup.
• Puree the watermelon, removing the seeds if necessary. Like I mentioned before, I recommend a food mill to do this, but if you don’t have one, a food processor works too (you just need to remove all of the seeds beforehand).

• Add the lime juice, lime zest and simple syrup to the watermelon puree and chill for at least 2 hours.
• After the puree has chilled, add the vodka to the puree and freeze in the ice cream maker according to manufacturer instructions.
• After it has frozen in the ice cream maker, remove the sorbet to a Tupperware and keep in the freezer for an hour before serving.

Verdict:
So light and refreshing! Our watermelon was so ripe and sweet, so the lime adds some much-needed acid to cut the sweetness. I always like to add just a touch of alcohol to sorbet. It prevents it from getting a bit too icy in the freezer. Don’t add too much though; that’ll prevent freezing and will taste more like it should be served with a paper umbrella.

Four Courses of Watermelon

As I mentioned in my last post, I went into this past weekend with 2.5 watermelons, the accumulation from several consecutive Local Boxes.  I actually managed to use it all up, too.  How?

For starters, I gave one to my next-door neighbor.  She was hosting a backyard get-together with some family, so she was grateful to have it.

Then my husband and I decided to make it a dinner-party theme.  We’d already invited three other couples over, and when we sat down to plan our menu, we started by reviewing all of our collected watermelon recipes. Here are the ones we chose:

• We started with Notebook Magazine’s watermelon sangria – a huge hit!
• Then we moved to the table and had a first course of Gourmet’s watermelon gazpacho.  This cold soup was like nothing we’d ever tasted before.  It’s savory (not at all sweet) and refreshing, a definite make-again for us.
• Along with local Eckerman’s sausages and Mandola’s quattro fromaggio pizza, we passed a bowl of Watermelon, Tomato, and Feta Salad from the Gourmet cookbook.
• Then for dessert, we dished up slices of Key lime pie made from Local Box Key limes and scoops of watermelon sorbet with bittersweet chocolate chips.

How have you eaten your Local Box watermelons?

Pickles!

As promised, I made pickles using an adaptation of my grandmother’s recipe, sent to me by my mother and credited to a friend of theirs named Mary Casata.  Instead of processing them, though, I made a simple refrigerator version by filling sealable leftover containers with the okra, then pouring the hot pickling liquid over them.  The result is quite nice – garlicky and crunchy.  (My recipe is at the bottom of this post.)

Then I opened the August issue of Gourmet and laughed out loud when I saw the title of a short piece in the Kitchen Notebook at the end of the magazine:  “Watermelon Again?”  It gave me the courage to face the two-and-a-half watermelons I’d accumulated from successive Greenling Local Boxes.

First, I made watermelon-rind pickles using the technique described in the magazine’s recipe for Smoked Pork Chop with Watermelon-Rind Pickle Salad, cutting my rind into fingerlings instead of julliene.  The result was delish!

Then?  I’ll share how my dinner party guests enjoyed four courses of watermelon in my next post.

Pickled Okra

1.5 lbs okra

2 t. dried dill (or 3 sprigs fresh)

3 cloves garlic

1 stalk celery, chopped

1/8 c. coarse, kosher salt

2 c. vinegar

2 c. water

Rinse okra and arrange in sealable leftover containers, leaving at least an inch of free space at the top.  Heat other ingredients to a boil in a saucepan over moderate heat, then pour hot liquid over okra and seal.  (If your containers are glass, do this gradually to give the glass time to expand and avoid explosion!)  Refrigerate, then enjoy cold!

Did anyone try Fearless Forager’s recipe yet?

Local Box, 07.30.2008

If my Greenling Local Box ever arrives *without* watermelon and okra, I think I’ll feel really nostalgic.

For dinner tonight, my husband is planning to toss a bunch of veggies with some pasta and cheese, per Suzan’s suggestion on the staples page.  Yellow squash, zucchini, pattypan squash, basil, and pepper will work great that way.

Confession time? I never got around to pickling okra OR making watermelon chutney last week, so those have moved up to this week’s agenda.  Last week’s okra seems to be hanging on to its freshness, but I’ll need to act quick!

I also didn’t use my acorn squash or red potatoes from last week, but I’m glad to be stockpiling those for a bigger dish this week that will yield leftovers.

What do you have planned for your Local Box this week?

Local Box 07.22.2008

I’m going to have to use a bigger table if this trend keeps up.

As I type, the sky is turning dark as Dolly arrives, so I’m in the mood for some foul-weather comfort food.  I’m thinking of trying a pot pie, perhaps this one, filled with summer squash, zucchini, onions, potato, and perhaps some eggplant.

I’m also keen to try pickling okra this week, as well as a squash gratin.

That watermelon might just be my biggest (ahem, pun intended) challenge of all.  It’s the biggest one yet!  And, truth be told, half of last week’s is still in my fridge.  Over lunch today, a friend suggested a watermelon chutney.  She loved one served with pork at Hudson’s on the Bend recently, and it sounds like something I might be able to freeze or can for later.  Does anyone have a recipe to share for that?

Report from Fearless Forager, week of 07.21.2008

Here’s what she’s got in store for this week’s Local Box:

• watermelon
• peaches
• slicing tomatoes
• head lettuce
• blueberries
• yellow squash
• zucchini
• variety squash – pattypan & zephyr
• okra
• herbs
• cantaloupe or canary melons
• eggplant – purple or white
• onions – 1015, yellow granix, or red burgundy
• peppers – bell, serrano, jalapeño
• red potatoes

Local Box 07.16.2008

As I write this now, a fellow on the radio is talking about how expensive food is.  But this week’s Greenling Local Box was quite a deal!  Here’s what I plan to do with the fruits of my $34.99 this week:

• We LOVED the watermelonade we made last week, so we’ll do it again this week.  A good-sized batch will only use half of this gi-normous watermelon, though, so we’re thinking of turning the other half to sorbet that we can enjoy later in the summer.
• For dinner tonight, we’re planning to create an eggplant pasta dish, probably this one I found at epicurious.com by searching for the terms eggplant, basil, bell pepper, and pasta — since I still have basil leftover from last week and I’ve got a hankerin’ for pasta.
• As soon as I empty my salad spinner of the basil it’s kept so well all week, I’ll use it to rinse, spin, and store the lettuce in this week’s box for salads later in the week.
• As always, we’ll eat the peaches and blueberries straight-up or over yogurt in the mornings.
• I’m planning to slice the zucchini and summer squash into ribbons, then cook them like pasta and sprinkle with olive oil, salt, and pepper — it’s an idea I got during a conversation with Todd Duplechan, the chef de cuisine at Trio (the restaurant in the Four Seasons Austin) last weekend.
• I can’t wait to fry the okra per the comment to last week’s post about okra!
• I’m undecided on the mint.  I’ve been longing for mint tea, but there’s also nothing like homemade mint-chocolate-chip ice cream…
• And then there are the three mystery items in my box this week — some small onions, a pair of small white squash, and two bright-green peppers!  I’ll query Fearless Forager about these and let you know what she says.

In the meantime, what are you planning to cook out of your Local Box this week?

Okra Update and a Watermelon Wonder

To follow-up on my search for new ways with okra, I tried a new recipe this weekend from the June issue of Gourmet.  (To be accurate, it was my husband who did the actual cooking!)  Our Okra Cornmeal Fritters turned out great.  We substituted Boggy Creek Farm’s smoke-dried tomatoes for the bacon the recipe calls for.  They turned out great, and the chef reports that he’d do it again, but next time he’ll soak the tomatoes in the oil overnight to better infuse it.

And to go with the fritters, waffles, and sliced heirloom tomatoes, we reached again into our Local Box to make the Watermelonade on the same page in the magazine.  We cut out the sugar since the watermelon Greenling sent was so very sweet, so essentially we just seeded the watermelon and whizzed it in the blender with a little lemon juice, salt, and ice in batches.  Then we poured the mixture through a sieve to get the pulp out.  The result was very refreshing — and much like agua fresca.  (Is this how you make agua fresca, too?)