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...

Potato Celeriac Soup

In our share this week we got a bulb of celeriac about 4" in diameter. Our newsletter gave us a good hint for peeling it -- it holds a lot of dirt so it's sort of a pain. They suggested slicing it across into rings and then peeling each ring so you can cut out all the dirt. Worked like a charm!

I started with a stock I made of one chicken carcass, some soggy celery, two onions, water, and a few pepper corns. Simmered it for about an hour and a half.

Potato Celeriac Soup

1-4" bulb celeriac, diced into 1/2" squares
5 medium potatoes, peeled and diced
Stock as described above - makes about 4 cups
3 T sunflower oil
Salt to taste

Saute the celeriac pieces in oil until soft and just beginning to brown in places. Add stock and potatoes. Simmer until tender. For smooth soup, blend with immersion blender, blender, or food processor. Add salt and water to get to desired texture and flavor.

All three of us liked this soup!

Celeriac and potato puree

Sometimes I have a recipe and none of the ingredients so I end up making something with just the tiniest bit of the original thought. This recipe started out as a celeric and apple recipe but I had just one sad little apple. And you know? This ended up being very very good.

Celeriac and Potato puree

Peel and cube a celeriac about 5" in diameter
Peel and cube about an equal volume of potatoes
2 good-sized shallots, diced
1 apple, peeled and diced
1/4 c butter
Water as needed.
Salt
Pepper

Preheat oven to about 375. Melt butter in a dutch oven. Toss in all the remaining ingredients and just a little water to make sure it doesn't dry out. Bake until celeric and potatoes are soft. Puree (I used the immersion blender) the mixture and add salt and pepper as desired.

Sam of course didn't like this but Ben and I did which was a very good thing because it made large batch.

Tiny little share

From the email it says we got kohlrabi (green and red), celeriac; shallots; fermented vegetable medley (seems to be like pickled vegetables when I tasted them), radish, pea, sunflower & cress sprouts (these sprouts are very good! Last week we had a huge back of them and we had sprout salads), frozen strawberries, Vermont Soy Co. tofu Butterworks Cream, Champlain Valley Creamery Cream Cheese (smells great! I need to pick up some bagels), and Patchwork Farm Bread.

It seems like a very small share as we had almost no root vegetables this week. I imagine they're getting closer to the end of the inventory for the year at this point so I'm hoping we'll soon be getting some greehouse produce. I'm also getting a real inventory of frozen strawberries since we've gotten huge bags of them in the last couple of shares.

Oh, the tofu! I'm not fond if it at all so I'm looking for suggestions for use where I won't know it's there. This time it's firmer than the stuff we had in the past which should be a plus. I think. The last time we got it I put some mashed tofu in soup and it messed with the broth by making semi gritty little chunks although it didn't have much flavor. I put it in bread and there is added a soy flavor I didn't like at all. I think I threw part of it out too and I hate doing that with any food.

Today our vegetable bin contains only the sprouts, two shallots, two potatoes, a few stalks of (non-local of course) celery, four carrots, non-local salad greens, and some garlic. I guess that means I've effectively used a lot of vegetables lately but it also means I'm going to have to get stuff at the store for the next few days.

How did I use most of the shallots and all the celeric and kohlrabi? I made a gratin to go with dinner (baked chicken, my Mom's crowd pleaser cabbage, this gratin with crack cookies for dessert) last night.





Creamy Kohlrabi and Celeriac Gratin

1 cup thinly sliced shallots
3 TB butter
1 lb. celeriac, peeled, quartered, then thinly sliced
1 lb. kohlrabi, peeled, quartered, then thinly sliced
2/3 cup heavy cream
2/3 cup milk
1 tsp dried, crushed tarragon
dash cayenne pepper
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp ground black pepper
grated cheddar for top of gratin (the recipe didn't call for this but how can you do a gratin without cheese?)

Preheat oven to 400F. Butter a deep dish pie plate. Heat 1 tablespoon butter in a small skillet over medium heat and saute shallots until translucent, but not yet browned, about 3 minutes.

Set aside. Combine the remaining ingredients, including the 2 tablespoons of butter, in a large pot. Cover and place over medium-high heat. As soon as the mixture boils, remove the pan from the heat and mix in sauteed shallots. Pour into prepared pie dish, smooth, top with cheddar, and cover with foil. Bake 40 minutes. Remove foil.

Bake for about 15 minutes more, until the veggies are tender, the top browns and the sauce bubbles thickly. Let stand 10 minutes before serving.


What did we think?

Me: Wow! Very rich but a little watery since the celeric and kohlrabi don't soak up the liquids the way potatoes do. The tarragon really improves the flavor over most gratins too. The cheddar on top was essential to the flavor so don't skip it even though the original recipe doesn't call for it.

Ben: Very good. He went back for seconds.

Sam: Can't be thinking about food, Judyboo is here and it doesn't matter what I'm eating except I really want cookies for dessert. Can I have dessert right now? I think he ate a little of it but not much.

Paul: Good. "Aazing how many people don't know anything about root vegetables. When I go to the store the checkout people hold up all these types of vegetables and ask me what they are." (Paul cooks a lot in case you were wondering)

Judyboo: (Note: Judy avoids most vegetables on principle) This is ok. But she ate it.