Tag Archives | recipe

Week 47 – The Joy of Cooking

By Erin Darling on May 30, 2011 in Darling Homemaking

The Delicious Spread

I. Love. Cooking. And I have missed being able to cook these past few months. Between moving and being pregnant and giving birth and taking care of my newborn, I have been able to do very little cooking since I started this blog post 47 weeks ago. Well…I’ve at least not been able to do nearly as much cooking as I’d have liked.

Since the birth, however, I’ve cooked nothing. Unless you count the rhubarb cobbler from Week 46. Or the leftovers I re-heated in the toaster oven.

Until now. I was finally able to cook. A real meal. With separate dishes. I did the whole thing with a sleeping baby in my ring sling, and I felt Ah-Maz-Ing. The food was yummy, yes, but the sense of satisfaction that I held in my heart was worth far more to me. I felt like I not only accomplished something, but also like I was reclaiming a part of “the old me.” In addition, I was glad to be able to give the gift of a meal to Mr. Wetzel. Cooking is one of our favorite “love languages.”

So: here was our meal in three dishes:
– Mahi Mahi from Trader Joes
– Parmesan Asparagus, adapted from a recipe I found on AllRecipees.com
– Garlic Mashed Potatoes

yummy close up asparagus trader joes mahi mahi mashed

Mahi Mahi, Garlic Mashed Potatoes & Parmesean Asparagus

How to make this meal at home…

Mahi Mahi from Trader Joes: Buy it in the frozen section. Thaw. Bake at 400 for 12ish minutes. I think. (Read the package)

Parmesan Asparagus: Pour the following into large ziplock bag: crushed garlic, olive oil, sea salt, pepper, parmesean. Add asparagus. Shmoosh it around and leave on the counter to drip and drizzle all over itself for a bit. Pour out onto cookie sheet & bake at 400 for 12ish minutes (the same as the fish! woo hoo!)

Q: Erin…how much of each ingredient should I put in the bag?
A: I dunno. Eyeball it.
(If you’re worried, look up “Parmesan Asparagus” on Allrecipes.com for a guideline. I just eyeballed it. And I put in way more Parmesan than called for. Because Wetzels love cheese.)

Garlic Mashed Potatoes: Sliced potatoes & boiled them (about 40 minutes). Separately, diced up the heads to my garlic greens and heated them in copious amounts of butter in a small skillet. Once potatoes were done, I mashed them with a potato masher (you can also use a mixer). Added garlic-butter mixture, plus a little extra butter (to taste) and some milk (about 1/4 cup), to make the potatoes creamier.

YUM!!!!!

WEEK 47

Radishes
Apples
Baby Bok Choi
Garlic Greens
Asparagus
Spinach
Mixed Spring Greens
Leeks

By ekwetzel
2011-05-30

Week 46 – Rhubarb In the Raw

By Erin Darling on May 28, 2011 in Darling Homemaking

The rhubarb plant in my yard

It is ridiculous how expensive rhubarb is.

I mean, seriously? The stuff grows like a weed. And it’s as sour as all get out. Most people have no clue what to do with it. But it’s not exotic; it’s just like the “stand-off-ish” fruit-vegetable* of the produce community. (*Is it a fruit? A vegetable? Do I care enough to wikipedia it? No)

But I loooooove rhubarb. I grew up with rhubarb growing in our yard; the patches grew and grew year after year. We always had plenty of rhubarb. It’s a family joke that we never had enough rhubarb pies, though. As it goes, my dad would get his “one rhubarb pie a year.” I’m not sure how strict that “one a year” rule was, but I remember pie came and went quickly. The rhubarb, however, lasted all summer.

From the time I was quite young, I’d mosey out to the yard with a kitchen knife, slice a stalk off at the base, and decapitate the big leafy head right then and there. Then I’d suck and chew my heart out. Raw rhubarb is so sour, but so poignant and tasty. And I loved it.

When we bought our house last August, one of the little treasures about it was that there was a rhubarb patch already started in the yard. Can you say heaven? I can. Achem: “Rhubarb.”

So, when we got rhubarb in our CSA, I chuckled. I didn’t need any extra. And I gave it away.

Here’s a yummy recipe for rhubarb cobbler, courtesy of my Mom. It’s suuuuper easy:

Strawberry Rhubard Cobbler

Mix together the following ingredients in a large/medium bowl:
– 1/4 teaspoon Cinnamon
– 1/4 teaspoon Ginger
– 3/4 cup Sugar
– 2-3 Tablespoons Flour
– 2 sticks Rhubarb
– 1 cup Strawberries
(You can use more strawberries & rhubarb if you want. I often use at least these amounts, and pile on a bit more)

Be sure to slice the rhubarb & strawberries!

Mixing up the fruit & spices.

Mix together the cobbler topping in a separate bowl, out of the following ingredients:
– 1 1/2 cups Instant Oatmeal (or 1 cup regular Oatmeal)
– 1/2 cup Brown Sugar
Then, smash in about 1/4 cup Butter for consistency. I use a fork or my hands.

Place fruit mixture in the bottom of a dish. Top with crumbly cobbler topping.

Bake at 350 F for about 45 minutes.

Prepping cobbler for baking

WEEK 46

Braising Mix
Arugula
Rhubarb
Leeks
Garlic Greens
Asparagus
Radishes
Apples
Carrots
Baby Bok Choi

By ekwetzel
2011-05-28

Week 10 – Recipes Schmecipes

By Erin Darling on September 10, 2010 in Darling Homemaking

This is not a blog series about how to cook the food you get from the farm. You will not find regular recipes listed that are appropriate for the “exotic” and “unusual” ingredients you get from your local farmer. There are several reasons for this:
(1) The food that is local for me may not be local for you. I live in the Pacific Northwest, but the Internet is world-wide. I want this blog to be applicable emotionally, across the barriers of space and time. (She says, as she gets out of her DeLorean.)
(2) I am not a gourmet chef. Other people with better zeal for ingredients and food combos can let you know interesting dishes in the style of the Food Network or other complex cooking resources.
(3) I don’t think you need fancy recipes to eat local food. For the most part any summer veggie can be diced, salted, tossed with oil, and it’s ready to eat. Winter veggies may need to be diced or chopped; then they can be pan-fried, roasted or grilled; and finally seasoned with salt or other spices (to taste) and they are ready to eat.

Your farm is not exotic. It is not unusual. It is right around the corner. The sooner we stop thinking of cooking vegetables as this enormous and daunting task, the sooner we’ll all eat a lot more vegetables.

A few basic principles with vegetable preparation are:
– Add salt. Veggies are often bland. They need salt.
– Add a fat. Cook in lard or butter. Coconut oil is also good. Toss raw veggies in olive oil. The nutrients from the veggies will better be absorbed into your system in you eat them with fats. (Author Nina Planck is a big resource for this wisdom.)
– Use the internet; there are a lot of good recipe ideas out there if you get stumped, and you can always alter them to make them simpler. For instance, I found a fancy recipe that included roasted beets and a homemade honey mustard dressing. Before I found it, I never knew how to eat all the beets we got from the farm (and, boy, do we get a LOT!). Now, I know if I roast them and include honey or honey-mustard, they taste delicious.
– Go by the tips of your taste buds! Trust your gut, be bold, and if you screw up a dish, don’t fret. The more you prep veggies, the better you’ll become, and the more you’ll trust yourself.

Sometimes it’s nice to combine vegetables that are in season together, and sometimes it’s nice to just eat certain veggies by themselves. For instance, I like to chop up my white kohlrabi, boil it, and do the same to a couple potatoes, and then mash them up together for a mashed potato-kohlrabi side. It has a hint of a mashed cauliflower taste, in my opinion.

To illustrate how easy it is to prepare in season foods, I will share with you a recipe for my favorite salad: Shopska salad. Below is my take on this traditional Bulgarian salad. You can omit or add ingredients depending on what you have available, or what your tastes are. The core of the salad in the cucumbers, tomatoes, salt, and oil (I always have at least these four, but the proportions fluctuate depending on what’s in my kitchen and what taste I’m feeling like having more of); a simpler version of this recipe would be to say, “Chop tomatoes and cucumbers. Add salt and olive oil. Enjoy!”

SHOPKSA SALAD

Prepare the following ingredients, and put them in a medium bowl:
– 1 cucumber, chopped
– 2 medium tomatoes, diced OR 1-2 cups of cherry tomatoes, split in half
– ½ sweet pepper, chopped (I prefer orange or red peppers)
– 1 or 2 whole scallions (the green + white parts), diced

Salt liberally.

Add 1 cap of red wine vinegar (about 1 teaspoon).

Liberally pour extra virgin olive oil over the salad (I never measure, but I probably pour between ¼ and ½ cup, depending on the amount of veggies).

Toss!

You can dish it up right away, but if you let it sit on the counter for at least 30 minutes, with a dishcloth covering it, the oils will make a nice “sauce” for dipping fresh, sliced bread into. When serving, I always add crumbled or shredded feta on top of each salad bowl, at least an ounce per person. I don’t buy it pre-crumbled, I do that myself (it tastes better). The salty and creamy cheese really helps to round off this light and delicious summery treat!

Enjoy!

By ekwetzel
2010-09-10

WEEK 10
We received 2 tomatoes in the share, but I forgot to include tem in the “group picture,” so they are featured separately, above.
(Clockwise, from the eggs)
Eggs (again, the farm has young hens, and they are laying smaller eggs this week, so we received 18 eggs instead of the normal dozen)
Arugula
2 Onions
2 Beets
Summer Squash
4 Red Potatoes
Haricot (Green Beans and Purple Beans)
4 Ears of Corn
Head of Garlic
Cucumber
2 Heads of Lettuce
(In the middle, from the left)
Carrots
Broccoli
Apples