Learning to Love Chard

My favorite thing about the CSA is that it’s making me find ways to cook and enjoy vegetables that I never thought I liked.  Swiss Chard is one of those.  I know it’s good for me, but I’d never had it in a way that appealed to me.

 

This week, I made two dishes with chard and loved them both.  The first was a Spanish tortilla, essentially a frittata with potatoes and chard.   Here’s what you do:

• Microwave 2 potatoes for about 5 minutes, until they get just a little tender, then peel and slice them
• Cut the chard into ribbons
• Saute 1 chopped onion and some garlic (to your taste – I like a lot) in some olive oil
• Add the chard and cook until it wilts, just a few minutes
• Remove the onions, garlic, and chard from the pan
• Add more oil and a little butter to the pan, then arrange a layer of potato slices
• Top with a layer of chard and some grated cheese – I used mozzarella and provolone, about a half cup per layer
• Repeat
• Beat 4 eggs with about a quarter of a cup of milk, and pour over the vegetables
• Let that cook until it’s getting set around the edges, then move it into the oven, under the broiler
• Broil until set and a little browned, and let it sit for a few minutes before cutting

 

I also made a lovely creamed swiss chard dish, which involved sautéing onions and garlic just like for the tortilla, then wilting the chard.  Once it’s almost cooked, add just enough cream to coat the chard and about a quarter of a cup of parmesan, and stir until that melts in.  I topped it with some salt, pepper, and a little nutmeg.  The cream and cheese balance the slight bitterness of the chard, and the result tasted downright decadent.

Yesterday was the last pickup of the “regular” CSA season, but there’s more goodies coming for the holidays.  And we all probably have tons of potatoes and winter squash in our kitchens.  What are you doing with those?  The CSA blog won’t be so regular for the next few months, not until the CSA starts up again next year, but keep the recipes coming, and I’ll post whenever I get a few to share.

Thanks!

Sherry

Butternut Squash Salad

Diana sent this one in earlier in the summer, and now that we’re getting winter squash, it seems timely.  Here’s what she wrote:

 

This is one of my favorite recipes from one of my favorite sites.  I just made it for a friend who loved it (and is now quite impressed with my cooking ability, which is never a bad thing).  She shared it with her brother, who ate it all.  Enjoy!!
Warm Butternut and Chickpea Salad with Tahini Dressing
Adapted from Orangette, who adapted it from Casa Moro

Yield: 4 servings

For salad:
1 medium butternut squash (about 2 to 2 1/2 pounds), peeled, seeded, and cut into 1 1/2-inch pieces
1 medium garlic clove, minced or pressed
1/2 teaspoons ground allspice (I skip this)
2 tablespoons olive oil
Salt
One 15-ounce can chickpeas, drained and rinsed (1 1/2 cups)
1/4 of a medium red onion, finely chopped
1/4 cup coarsely chopped fresh cilantro or parsley

For tahini dressing:
1 medium garlic clove, finely minced with a pinch of salt
1/4 cup lemon juice
3 tablespoons well-stirred tahini
2 tablespoons water
2 tablespoons olive oil, plus more to taste

Preheat the oven to 425°F.

In a large bowl, combine the butternut squash, garlic, allspice, olive oil, and a few pinches of salt. Toss the squash pieces until evenly coated. Roast them on a baking sheet for 25 minutes, or until soft. Remove from the oven and cool.

Meanwhile, make the tahini dressing: In a small bowl, whisk together the garlic and lemon juice. Add the tahini, and whisk to blend. Add the water and olive oil, whisk well, and taste for seasoning. The sauce should have plenty of nutty tahini flavor, but also a little kick of lemon. You will probably need to add more water to thin it out.

To assemble the salad, combine the squash, chickpeas, onion, and cilantro or parsley in a mixing bowl. Either add the tahini dressing to taste, and toss carefully, or you could serve the salad with the dressing on the side. Serve immediately.

Do ahead: Molly says this salad, lightly dressed, keeps beautifully in the fridge, that you should hold a little of the dressing on the side and that it can be reheated in the microwave. I, for one, have never had any leftovers.

 

Bacon+Cheddar+Swiss Chard Potato Soup

Alta Sacra sent in this note and recipe.  Apologies to my vegetarian and vegan friends, but the combination of bacon and cheddar makes this sound especially good to me!  Thanks, Alta!

After the massive load of potatoes and the beautiful swiss chard in the Grow Youngstown share yesterday, I whipped up this recipe for some delicious potato soup!

Bacon+Cheddar+Swiss Chard Potato Soup

1 large onion (or 2 small), chopped

2-4 few garlic cloves, minced

2-4 swiss chard stalks (leaves only), chopped

2 tsp dried basil (or a comparable amout of fresh)

2 tsp sea salt

1 tsp black pepper

1 tsp hot sauce

1/3 c flour

6 c chicken broth

12-16 small to medium sized potatoes, peeled, cubed

2 c of half ‘n half

shredded cheese, as desired

crumbled bacon, as desired

chopped green onions, as desired

Saute chopped onion, minced garlic and chopped swiss chard in desired substance (I cooked mine in a little butter, but you could use bacon drippings –I didn’t actually cook the bacon myself but bought pre-cooked bacon, therefore no bacon drippings). When vegetables are tender and onions are slightly browned, combine flour, sea salt, pepper, basil, hot sauce. slowly add chicken broth, mix contents thoroughly, bring to boil and boil for about two minutes, then add half ‘n half and potatoes. Turn on low to medium heat and simmer for one hour, making sure that it does not boil. You can opt to add bacon, shredded cheese and chopped green onions along with the potatoes and half ‘n half or add them later as a garnish.

yield: 6-8 servings

Soup Weather

We’ve been getting winter squash for the last two weeks, and the weather is just starting to be right for squash soup.  This morning’s forecast calls for temps in the 50s on Friday and Saturday.  So how about this – curried squash soup?

 

Cut a butternut squash in half, and discard the seeds and stringy stuff in the middle.  Put the two halves face down on a cookie sheet on which you’ve drizzled a little olive oil.   Bake at 400 degrees for about 45 minutes to an hour, until the squash is soft all the way through.

 

Let the squash cool until you can handle it comfortably, and scoop out the cooked flesh.

 

In your soup pot, saute a chopped onion, a couple of cloves of garlic, and a little grated ginger – I use about a teaspoon —  until they’re soft.  If you want your soup spicy, you could include a minced Serrano pepper, too.

 

Stir in the squash.  It doesn’t have to be fully mashed, because you’ll puree the soup later.

 

Add enough broth (chicken or vegetable, depending on your preference) to make it soupy.  Very precise measurement, huh?  I’d say you want about one and half times as much broth as vegetables, and since squash come in different sizes, it’s hard to be precise.  Better to add less than you think you might need, since you can always add more later.

 

Let this cook for a few minutes to further soften the squash, and then add a tablespoon of curry spice mix.  You can make your own or use a good packaged mix.  Simmer for 5-10 minutes, then taste.  Add more curry if you want at this point.

 

Turn off the heat and let the soup cool.  If you have an immersion blender, you can puree the soup right in the pot.  Otherwise, puree it in batches in a blender or food processor.

 

Serve it hot, with a bit of yogurt if you like for added creaminess.  This will keep you warm on a drizzly, cold day.

Healthy Decadence?

If you attended Grow Youngstown’s fundraiser in July, you had the chance to taste Jack Kravitz’s zucchini pancakes.  Inspired by Jack, a bin full of potatoes, one zucchini, and one patty pan squash, I made a batch of zucchini-potato pancakes last night.  They hit the perfect spot between decadent (they’re fried, after all) and healthy (all those veggies).

 

Zucchini-Potato Pancakes

 

1 or 2 small to medium sized zucchini or other summer squash

1 medium-size potato

1 small onion

1 TBSP chopped parsley

1 egg

Salt and pepper to taste

Canola oil for frying

 

Grate the zucchini, potato, and onion.  Put the grated veggies in a towel and squeeze out as much moisture as you can.  Then mix in the egg, parsley, and salt and pepper, stirring until the egg is well distributed.

 

Heat a couple of tablespoons of oil in a frying pan, and drop about 3 tablespoons of the mixture in for each pancake.  Flatten a bit with a spatula, and let brown on one side.  Flip and brown on the other.  Remove to a paper-towel lined plate, sprinkle with more salt, and keep the cooked pancakes in the oven on low heat while you cook the remaining batches. You may have to add more oil to the pan at some point.

 

I topped mine with a little sour cream, but I’ll admit that this may tip the balance from healthy to definitely decadent.  But good.

Recipe Roundup

Here are a few recipes from other sources, sent by CSA members, to use the tomatoes, corn, apples, and zucchini in this week’s basket.

Howard Markert suggested these:

Grilled Corn and Tomato Salad

Zucchini Apple Salad

And Diana sent this one:

Charred Corn Tacos with Zucchini-Radish Slaw

Then I went looking for recipes for green tomatoes, other than frying them  – not that I have anything against that.  I found one that fits this week’s CSA nicely:  Green and Red Tomato and Corn Soup.  The high on Thursday is supposed to be in the upper 50s, so it might be time for soup.

What Do I Do with This?

This week’s CSA includes two items that had many people asking questions at the pickup site: spaghetti squash and okra.  I’ve cooked one many times, and I’m looking forward to experimenting with the other.

Scraping the flesh from a spaghetti squash, photo by Derek Ramsey

Here’s what I do with spaghetti squash:

Cut it in half lengthwise, scoop out the seeds, and bake cut side down on an oiled cookie sheet for about an hour at 375.

 Let it cool a bit, so you can handle it comfortably.  Then use a fork to scrape through the flesh, breaking it into spaghetti-like strands.

 Then toss that with whatever you like.  I like some garlic, sautéed in butter and olive oil, plus some grated parmesan or romano and chopped herbs, especially basil or parsley.  Some folks put a traditional red tomato sauce on top or pesto.  The flavor is not especially strong, so you can top or toss it with almost anything.

Now the okra, on the other hand, will require some research.  I found a basic set of instructions here, and a recipe for an Indian variation here.  I haven’t tried either yet, so I make no promises.  If you have a great way to prepare okra, please let the rest of us know!

Celebrating Food, Family, and Culture with Ella’s Pickles

It may be too late in the season to get pickling cucumbers, but I wanted to share this recipe anyway.  On Sunday, Grow Youngstown and Congregation Ohev Tzedek held a “celebration of food, family, and culture.”  We shared a meal of homemade dishes prepared with locally-sourced fruits and vegetables — including these pickles — and then shared stories about food and family.  One of the cooks, Art Einzig, brought terrific dill pickles and kim chee, and like the other cooks, he also brought copies of the recipe.  But unlike the rest of us, his recipe included the story of Ella Lackey and her mother — the women who first made the pickles. Here’s what Art wrote:

Ella Lackey was a great lady along with being a great cook. One of her specialties was kosher dill pickles.  The legend has it that this pickle recipe was developed by Ella’s mother, Mrs. Berkowitz when she would sell her pickles in the public market on East Federal Street in the early 1900’s  to help support her large family of 6 children. She shared her recipe with many of her friends at Ohev Tzedek including my mother, Lillian.  Marty and Ella were good friends of my parents Leo and Lillian, and in later years I also grew close to Marty and Ella. But what Ella gave me was more than a great pickle recipe. After my father died, my mother and I would get together and make these wonderful pickles. That memory alone makes this recipe special, and each time I even think about kosher dill pickles I think of Ella and my Mom, and I say to myself,  “Is this pickle as good as one of Ella’s?”

 

Ella’s Garlic Pickles 

This recipe will make about 11 quarts

Ingredients

1 basket       or 8 quarts of small cucumbers (that are small enough to fit into quart jars without cutting into spears

11 TSPN       pickling spices (you can make your own or use off-the-shelf pickling spice

55-66           peeled cloves of garlic; depending how garlicky you want the pickles put 5 or 6 cloves into each quart

11 TBSN       Kosher salt or pickling salt

6-11              Hungarian hot peppers or Italian hot peppers; depending how hot you want the pickles, you can place a half         pepper in each quart instead of a whole pepper

33+               sprigs of dill, preferably with some seed pods for more flavor (minimum of 3 sprigs in each quart jar)

11                 quart jars with canning lids

 

Preparation

1.       Scrub the cucumbers thoroughly with a soft brush. Discard any cucumbers that are soft or spoiled. Remove blossoms by trimming off blossom end where necessary. Allow cucumbers to air dry on towels or in colanders.

2.       In a dishwasher or in boiling water sterilize 11 quart jars and lids. Allow to dry on clean dish towels.

3.       Place 1 TBSN of salt and 1 TSPN of pickling spice in the bottom of each jar. Put 2 or 3 sprigs of dill in the bottom of the jar with 4 or 5 garlic cloves.

4.       Cut the hot peppers into halves lengthwise removing all seeds and membrane.

5.       Begin filling each quart jar with cucumbers and one or two halves of peppers as tightly as possible without damaging the cucumbers. The finished product should be tight to the sides of the jar so they will not move.

6.       Add the remaining one or two cloves of garlic and the one or two sprigs of dill on the top of the cucumbers in each quart jar. All cucumbers should be at least ¾” down from the top of the jar to ensure the water will cover them.

7.       Fill each quart jar with tap water to within ¼” – ½” from the top. Make sure the rim of each quart jar is clean and place the lids on each, hand tightening without over-tightening.

Eggplant Supreme, submitted by Laura Miller

I found this recipe in my 1986 Southern Living Annual Recipes book.  I needed something a bit different than the old eggplant standbys of Eggplant Parm or Ratatoiulle.  This was good warm or even as chilled leftovers.

• 1 large eggplant
• 2/3 cup chopped celery
• 1 large onion, chopped
• 1 small green pepper, chopped
• 1/4 cup butter or margarine
• 1 cup (4 ounces) shredded sharp Cheddar cheese
• 1 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1/8 teaspoon pepper
• dash of hot sauce
• 1/2 cup cracker crumbs    (oops, I missed  adding these)

Peel eggplant and cut into 1/2-inch cubes.  Cook in boiling water 8 minutes or until eggplant is tender; drain well and set aside.

Saute celery, onion, and green pepper in butter in large skillet until vegetables are tender. Stir in eggplant, Cheddar cheese, Worcestershire sauce, salt, pepper and hot sauce.

Spoon eggplant mixture into a lightly greased 1.5 quart baking dish; sprinkle with cracker crumbs.  Bake at 350 degree for 30 minutes.  Yield 4-6 servings.

Curried Chicken Stuffed Peppers – submitted by Laura Miller

With all these green peppers, frying peppers and hot hungarian peppers in our weekly pick-up, I decided I needed to get “stuffed.”  But what I recall from childhood, I really don’t like stuffed green peppers.  So with that memory, I found a recipe from my 1987 Annual Southern Living Recipes that takes a different, tasty spin on the standard, tomatoe based stuffed peppers.  FYI – I’m copying the recipe as it is printed from the cook book.  I tend to take license with ingredients and quantity. I’ll note those at the end.

• 6 medium-size green peppers (approx 2 lbs)
• 1 cup peeled and chopped cooking apple
• 1 cup chopped celery
• 1/2 cup chopped onion
• 2 tablespoons cornstarch
• 1 (12-oz) can evaporated skim milk
• 2 cups chopped chicken  (cooked without salt)
• 1-1/2 cup cooked brown rice (cooked without salt or fat)
• 1/4 cup raisins
• 1/4 teaspoon + 1/8 tsp salt
• 1/4 teaspoon white pepper
• 1/8 teaspoon coconut extract
• 2 teaspoons curry powder
• 1/4 cup chopped unsalted almonds

Cut off tops of peppers and remove seeds.  Wash peppers and set aside.  (I did blanch peppers for 5 minutes.)  Coat skillet with cooking spray (I just used a bit of olive oil) and place over medium-high heat until hot.  Add apple, celery and onion; saute until crisp-tender.  Dissolve cornstarch in milk; add to vegetable mixture.  Cook over medium heat, stirring constantly, until thickened.  Stir in chicken, rice, raisins, salt, white pepper, coconut extract and curry.  Spoon 3/4 cup mixture into each pepper; top with almonds.  Cook in 400 degree oven for 30-40 minutes. If desired, peppers can be wrapped in foil and frozen.  To heat frozen peppers, vent foil and bake at 400 degress for 60-70 minutes.  <Serves 6>

My personal variations include: using two cans of white breast chicken which I flaked; I skipped the coconut extract; I used 1.5 cups bulgar instead of rice (since I made taboulleh the same day). and I likely used 1 cup onion and 2 large tsp of curry.  This recipe worked well regardless of the peppers used – - I liked best with the hungarian hot!