Underutilized blog

We've been doing the share for long enough now that I'm not experimenting with new recipes nearly as much so I've decided to change the focus to what's for dinner. I often use leftovers to build new meals both because I'm lazy and because it's efficient. It will also shows how I use the share stuff throughout the week. We're still getting the share every other week rather than every week because, well, there really is such a thing as too many root vegetables and there are times I really really want a meal that includes fresh salsa and guacamole in the middle the winter. I made that last week at some point and it was spectacular. Ben said "It's better for my diet to not have this stuff because I don't eat nearly as much of the root vegetables as this."


I don't plan out our meals in advance although I do generally contemplate what we can do for dinner that night while I'm going about my business during the day. My goal is to cook from what we have at home because going to the store constantly is a bit of a waste of time. Some nights we have leftovers, some nights we go out to dinner or get carry out. Ben sometimes cooks but his philosophy of cooking is different than mine; he decides what he feels like eating, goes shopping, and then prepares the meal.



Our share this week:

2 lbs Banana Fingerling Potatoes; 2 lbs Sugarsnax and Chanteney Carrots; 2 lbs Parsnips; 2 lbs Yellow Onions; Shoot/Claytonia Mix; 1 Bag Frozen Zucchini; Elmore Mountain Country French Bread; 1 Dozen Pa Pa Doodles or Gopher Broke Farm Eggs; Vt Soy Tofu Scramble; 2 lbs Frozen Elderberries

Elderberries? Something new and different. I don't think I've ever had them. I'm not so thrilled about the tofu scramble because I'm just not a tofu fan. But hey, a week with nothing in the cabbage family! Yay!

Sunday: Potato, celeriac*, and greens soup, bread. I added greens I'd blanched, chopped, and frozen this summer to increase the nutritional value. It really doesn't seem to add much flavor.

* I discovered that the easiest way to peel this vegetable with many dirt-laden nooks is to cut it into rings and then cut the peel off each ring individually. Takes a little time but leads to less waste than other methods I've tried.

Monday: Chicken and Biscuits, savoy cabbage and carrot salad.

Tuesday: Sloppy joes on whole wheat buns. Winter squash from the share I'd prepared and frozen earlier. Leftover cabbage and carrot salad.

Wed & Thur (this was a big batch so we had it two days in a row - I often freeze some when I make a lot but I needed something easy for Thursday): Bread, Beef stew with carrots and fingerling potatoes. Ben liked it so much he ate the leftovers for breakfast and asked if it was a "real" recipe or something "in my head." Er, this was another one I just made up but here are the approximate measures.

Beef Stew

2 lbs cheap cut of beef, cubed about 1 1/2"
1 large onion, diced
2 ribs celery, diced
Oil
1 lb fingerling potatoes
1 lb carrots, cut into largish pieces
1 quart stock (I had lamb stock in the freezer but anything will do)
Salt, pepper, rosemary, thyme, herbs de provence to taste

Sear meat in oil, then remove. Saute onion and celery. Add everything into the pot and simmer for about an hour, maybe more, until everything is tender. Adjust seasoning. It got better on reheating.

Thumbs up from Sam and Ben. Me? I'm not much of a beef stew fan. Thursday before and after dinner I made cupcakes for the Kindergarten bake sale.

Friday: Pizza, claytonia and spouts salad. Claytonia is an interesting green, very small leaves, that our CSA grows in their greenhouse even during cold Vermont winters. It's quite sweet. The sprouts were already mixed with the claytonia and included at least radish and sunflower, I'm not sure what else. Quite a tasty mix.


I make my own pizza dough based on a recipe from Cook's Illustrated. It's a very thin crispy crust, a favorite around here.


Pizza Crust

2 c flour
1/2 tst salt
1/2 tsp dry yeast
1/2 tsp honey
3/4 c 100 degree F water
1/4 c olive oil

Put flour, yeast, salt, and honey in a food processor. At slow speed, add water until just mixed. Then add olive oil slowly. Remove dough (it'll be wet and soft) from the bowl and toss it onto the counter about 10 times. Place dough in a sealed plastic bag in the refrigerator overnight or at least 10 hours.

Approximately an hour before cooking, place pizza stone on the bottom oven rack and preheat oven to 500 F. Split dough into two parts. Place each on a 15" wide parchment paper. Cover with plastic wrap -- you'll probably need two since this is going to make 15" very thin pizzas. Roll between the parchment and plastic wrap until it is a 15" circle.

Note: since this crust is so thin you can't top these heavily or they'll get soggy. Each pizza uses about 5 oz of grated cheese. I prefer the simple combination of sauce, cheese, and pepperoni or else I'll use some of the pesto sauce I made and froze this summer as a topping.

Bake for 8-10 minutes, until the crust is crisp and the cheese begins to brown. Watch closely because it can go from perfectly done to burned in a very short time.


Saturday: Veggie Barley Soup, bread. Similar to this recipe but I didn't have any meat of any sort so I just added more beans. I used a large can of red kidney beans, a can of butter beans and one of small white beans. I also tossed in the package of frozen zucchini from the share and a package of greens I'd previously frozen. It made a nice big pot of food and I freeze leftovers for lunch at work. These are the types of leftovers I look forward to eating...

Mmmm, pizza

But different. Try apple, rosemary, blue cheese, and walnut pizza. Sounds odd, tastes great. This is based on a recipe in our share newsletter a couple of weeks ago.




Apple, Blue Cheese, and Walnut Pizza


The original recipe appears in Dishing Up Vermont by Tracey Medeiros. I've modified by not measuring and using a different crust.


Pizza dough (I used 2 c white bread flour and 1 c whole wheat pastry flour that made 2 pizzas, this and another more traditional pizza)


1 large apple, unpeeled, cored, and cut into 1/8 inch slices
3/4 cup crumbled blue cheese (3 oz)
1/2 - 3/4 cup shredded Monterey Jack cheese (2-3 ounces) - I used mozzarella
1 1/2 tsp chopped fresh rosemary, or 3/4 tsp dried
1/2 cup coarsely chopped walnuts


Preheat oven to 500F and place pizza stone into bottom of the oven.

Roll half the dough to a 13-inch circle on parchment paper. Bake the crust for approximately 10 minutes, or until it just begins to brown. Cover the crust with apple slices, cheeses, rosemary, walnuts to taste. Bake an additional 10-12 minutes, or until edges are lightly browned.



Ben and I loved it, Sam tried it and ended up waiting for the more traditional pepperoni pizza.



Look! I remembered to take a picture.

Pizza!

Who doesn't like pizza? I love the stuff and could probably eat it about three times a week without complaint. I usually go for a nice pepperoni but sometimes I like to experiment and today was such a day.

We had some leeks left from the share and a bit of the bacon as well. Why not get creative?

Bacon and Leek Pizza

1/4 lb bacon

3 leeks, cleaned, cut into 1/8" or so slices.

4 oz sharp cheddar, grated

4 oz mozzarella, grated

Pizza Dough

A note about how I bake pizzas - I use a pizza stone on the bottom shelf of the oven and set the oven at 500 degrees. Allow the stone to preheat for about 45 minutes to make sure it's good and hot. I roll out the dough on parchment paper to allow me to slide the dough onto the pizza stone easily.

Make the pizza dough. Cook the bacon then remove it from the pan and cut into very small pieces. Cook the leeks in the bacon fat.

Roll 2/3 of the dough into a 15" round. Spread the leek mixture evenly across the dough, top with the cheeses then the bacon. Bake about 12 minutes until nicely browned.

But what did I do with the remaining 1/3 of the dough?

Blueberry Dessert Pizza

Amounts are approximate

3 oz cream cheese

1/4 c sour cream

3 tbsp brown sugar

1 c blueberries

Roll dough approximately 10". Bake crust only on pizza stone for about 6 minutes, until lightly browned. Meanwhile, mix the cream cheese, sour cream, and brown sugar adjusting the ratios as you like.

Remove the crust from the oven and allow to cool. Spread the cream cheese mixture on the crust and have Sam top it with blueberries.

Verdict: Thumbs up on both all the way around. I ate too much....

Potato Fennel Pizza

Our newsletter had this series of recipes so I decided to give them a try.

Deborah’s Fried Potatoes and Fennel

2# Potatoes
2 bulbs fennel (I had only one bulb of fennel)
2-3 Tbsp oil
2 garlic scapes (I subbed a clove of garlic)
salt & pepper

Slice potatoes into thin rounds. Trim the ends and the stems from fennel; cut the bulb into thin julienne. Heat oil in a large skillet and sauté the potatoes with fennel, garlic, salt & pepper until golden brown.

I grated the potatoes to make them thinner and then stuck them in the colander to get some of the excess moisture out of there so they'd cook up a bit more crispy.


Quick Pizza Dough

1 tbsp yeast
1 C warm water
3 C flour (I used 2 c bread flour, 1 c whole wheat pastry flour)
1 tbsp oil
1 tsp salt

Blend four, yeast and salt in a mixing bowl or food processor. Mix in water and oil to make kneadable dough. Use a bit more water or flour to get the right consistency. Knead 10 minutes by mixer or hand, one minute by processor. Set aside to rise one hour.

8/20/08 Update. I made this with all white flour and used 1 1/2 tsp of salt. I also made it in the morning and let it rise, punched it down and tossed it into the refrigerator. MUCH IMPROVED!


Potato and Arugula Pizza

1 recipe of pizza dough
1 recipe fried potatoes and fennel
¼ cup arugula pesto
1 tomato, cut into thin wedges or small chunks
grated cheese of your choice

Divide the dough into 2 portions and form into pizzas. Par-bake briefly to set, then spread with arugula pesto. Top with potatoes, fennel, tomatoes and grated cheese. Grill or bake until toasty, bubbly and melted.


This is pizza so of course I changed it. The tomato didn't sound good on there so I made a salad and put the tomato in the salad instead. I used a mix of mozz, parm, and sharp cheddar and of course I used a lot of it. I added some fresh basil from the garden right over the pesto layer. I formed the dough on parchment for easy handling and I baked the pizzas a 500 degree oven on a baking stone. I par-baked the crusts for five minute and the pizzas took an additional 7 minutes.


Verdict:

Generally positive all the way around although we all agreed a basil pesto would have given it a nicer flavor.

The potato/fennel mix was excellent!

The crust was ok but seemed like a quick crust, not a lot of chew to it.