Pesto Potato Pinenut Pizza

Sometimes everything your boyfriend brings home from the farm is so yummy the two of you just have to cook it all up and throw it into a delicious, to-hell-with-gluten-free-eating Vicolo cornmeal pizza crust and you have to eat every bite because it’s just that darn good and you’re probably not allergic to wheat, anyways, right? Right.

What are other peoples’ secret glutenous temptations? French bread? Chocolate cake? Oreos?

Mine is Vicolo cornmeal pizza crusts, which with a name like that should be gluten-free but sadly the first ingredient is wheat flour. But there’s just nothing else like them. I dream of their crunch, their heart-meltingly good flavor, bold enough to stand alone, tender enough to cradle and enhance all the lovely things Duck harvests from the ground.

Crisp slices of grilled eggplant, garlicky sauteed spinach, barely toasted pine nuts, oven-baked new potato slices, homemade vegan basil pesto, and diced tomatoes from a tin. Each ingredient on this pizza demanded its own cooking method (not counting that not-particularly-laborious stint with a can opener) but it was so worth it to have each vegetable singing out at its very best.

Scrap Stock IV – Mega-edition

Another consequence of being too tired to cook or blog or generally do anything was that my veggie scraps really started piling up. By early this week most of my fridge’s top shelf seemed to be devoted to scraps, waiting like pining lovers for the transformative kiss of the stock pot. So when I finally started to have a bit more energy, it was time to brew up some stock and get that shelf cleared.

I ended up having enough material to make two pots of stock, ending up with 13 cups of rich, savory broth, tinged a beautiful pink from the beet scraps. My freezer is truly well stocked now, which saves me from treating the stock like it is a scarce commodity.

In this mega-edition of scrap stock:

Spinach crowns
Garlic peels and trim
Carrot trim and tops
Chard stem
Kale stem
Asparagus trim
Red cabbage trim
Fennel stalks
Apple cores
Radish trim
Leek trim
Green garlic trim
Arugula trim
Sugar snap pea trim
Thyme stalks
Red onion peels and trim
Shallot peels and trim
Mustard green trim
Beet trim
Bay leaves

Scrap stock, round two

I was so nervous making this week’s scrap stock! I think I was worried that last week’s good results were sheer random luck and that it was statistically unlikely I would succeed again if I just did a repeat of last week’s method of simply cooking up all my veggie scraps from the past week, without regard to composition. But I gave it another shot. This week’s stock came out quite rich and quite assertive, which is unsurprising given that there were many asparagus stalks, fennel tops, and even two heads of roasted garlic that had been emptied of their yummy gooey cloves. I think it would make a delicious soup base, but I wouldn’t use it for something like risotto, because it would just take over the dish.

In this week’s scrap stock:
Leek tops
Green onion tops
Carrot tops
Roast garlic bulbs (no cloves)
Red cabbage trim
Red kale trim
Fennel stalks and leaves
Asparagus bottoms
Carrot trim
Shallot peels and trim
Spinach crowns
Thyme stalks
Sugar snap pea trim
Garlic peels and trim
Mushroom stems

Spinach for breakfast, the sequel

I’m totally enjoying the feature on wordpress that lets me see what google search phrases have led people here, to my box. I get a lot of visitors on “aphid” related searches, and surprisingly few on “community supported agriculture” related ones. (Although I get a lot of CSA-specific visitors clicking over from the Eatwell list of member blogs and from the post on Chowhound about choosing a CSA.)

Super Easy Pan-Cooked Spinach Fritatta with Humboldt Fog cheese, green garlic, spring onion, and thyme (medium-pan sized, cut in half) with a salad of lettuce, red cabbage, cauliflower, carrot, and sugar snap peas

One surprising search phrase that shows up almost every day, sometimes in multiple versions, is some variation of “spinach for breakfast.” Which is, of course, the title of a post I made back in February extolling the pleasures of spinach as a breakfast food. My first thought of course is, “Wow, there sure are a lot of people who want to know about eating spinach for breakfast. Huh.” My next thought every time I see that someone’s search for breakfast-spinach information led them here is a bit of guilt. Because my first Spinach for Breakfast post is more about my personal, heartwarming journey to spinach acceptance than it is a helpful guide on how to use spinach in one’s morning meal. Which I assume is what all these googlers are googling for.

So I decided to revisit the topic of spinach for breakfast. It gives me an excuse to share a recipe I’ve been wanting to share. The other morning I was cooking breakfast (it involved spinach, of course) and thinking about how much this one recipe, which isn’t even a recipe but more of a technique, completely changed my breakfast life. I used to think I was “not a breakfast person” and “not an egg cooker” because fried eggs bored me, scrambled eggs eluded me, and frittatas were special occasion food involving all kinds of fancy cooking and flipping using plates or pans with heat-proof handles so you could finish them in the oven.

Super Easy Pan-Cooked Frittata with Carmody cheese and thyme (small-pan sized, whole), tempeh bacon, and fruit salad with pomelo, kiwi, apple, and mint

This technique is usually how spinach ends up in my breakfast, but it’s also a great, simple way to incorporate most any kind of leftover into a hot, pleasing morning meal. It’s so obvious that I feel a little silly even writing it down, but I so distinctly remember the change in breakfast, from before I practiced this to after, that it seems worth taking the time to share it.

Recipe below…

Scrap Stock

Some kind of revolution took place before I was born, or at least before the chef side of me was born into consciousness. By the time I made my first forays into vegetarian cooking, there was a kind of stock backlash happening in the pages of all the cookbooks I read. According to all these veg-empowerment cookbooks, people used to make their stock from scraps and trimmings, but now, especially for a vegetarian cook without simmering bones and flavorful marrow to add to the pot, this was highly discouraged. We are worth it!, these books proclaimed. Worth a delicious, savory stock made from whole vegetables and bundles of aromatic herbs. I made vegetable stock from one of these recipes once. I almost cried to see pounds and pounds of beautiful vegetables reduced to a heap of mush and a pot of broth.

And so the scrap stock experiment was born. For a bit more than a week I saved all the trimmings from every vegetable I ate. Brown or yellow bits went straight into the compost, but everything else was washed and put into a tightly sealed plastic tub in the fridge. At the end of the week, I made an experimental stock. I had no idea how it might turn out. Really bitter, I suspected, because the majority of the heap consisted of the green, almost leathery tops of leeks, green garlic, and spring onions. But I figured, what do I have to lose? All I’m really wasting is the water I’m adding – everything else was compost-bound. At the last minute I almost chickened out and added a whole onion, a whole carrot, just a few things to boost the flavor, but I decided to really go for it this first time and just see what happened.

Here’s what ended up going into my scrap stock pot:

Leek greens and ends
Green garlic greens and ends
Spring onion greens and ends
Swiss chard stalks
Onion ends and peels from red and white onions
Red cabbage leaves from the outside of the cabbage
Spinach crowns
Garlic ends and peels
Thyme stalks
Carrot leaves and trimmings
Cauliflower leaves
Kale stalks
Radish trimmings
Sugar snap pea tops and strings

I cut everything into pieces and then first sauteed the allium trimmings (leeks, garlic, onions) for a bit in 2 teaspoons olive oil, then threw everything into the pot and stirred it over pretty high heat for about ten minutes. Then I added 3 quarts of water, 2 1/2 teaspoons of salt, 3 bay leaves and a few peppercorns, brought it to a boil, turned it down to a simmer, and simmered it, uncovered, for about half an hour. I let it settle for a few minutes and then strained it right way (I’ve heard stock can get bitter if you let the bits sit in the broth too long after cooking). And I have to say, it is quite, quite tasty. Certainly head and shoulders above the bitter brews that pass for vegetable broth in those vacuum-boxes. I can’t wait to freeze it and have it on hand the next time I need veggie broth for something. Best of all I am so tickled to have created something really valuable from something I’ve been throwing away. There may have been a broth revolution, but I guess I’m just an old-fashioned girl.

Experimental Quiche: Pea Shoots, Stir-fry Mix, Spinach

I had all this stuff for stir-frying: pea shoots and the aptly named stir-fry mix. But even though I’ll order pea shoots every time I see them on the menu, I haven’t been too successful with them at home in the past and I basically just didn’t want stir-fry. No Asian flavors, no lovely bright vegetables that have to be individually chewed. No, I wanted a soft, dense pile of comfort food.

So I thought I would try another variation on the Spinach, Chard, and Onion Torta that was one of my first box meals, using eggs, leeks, green garlic, pea shoots, the chard-heavy stir-fry mix, and a bag of spinach for the filling. I had a cup of cooked black rice and a cup of cooked quinoa in the fridge, both a day or so from going bad. And with no plans to eat stir-fry any time soon, the likelihood of those grains being eaten was slim to none. That’s when I came across a terrific-sounding recipe for quiche crust made from cooked rice and an egg – a perfect solution to my leftover rice problem that would also allow me to avoid the gluten-heavy breadcrumb crust of the original torta. The crust came out of the oven looking so beautiful – all purple and golden from the grains – that I know this will become a staple solution for the piles of grains that I make ahead for convenience but sadly sometimes end up throwing away. It tasted merely neutral, providing good texture but not contributing anything to the flavor of the quiche, but I feel confident that some doctoring ahead of time with herbs and garlic and salt and pepper will turn it into something magnificent.

Chard and Spinach

There was a recipe in my box newsletter for a bhaji (a simple vegetable curry) using chard and spinach, both of which came in that week’s box. It was a Madhur Jaffrey recipe, and while the fact that she seems to be universally adored by vegetarians was definitely a recommendation (I’ve never cooked any of her recipes myself), I scanned the recipe and thought it looked a little bland. I really liked the concept, though, so I decided to make a similar favorite from 5 Spices, 50 Dishes instead. It’s a versatile dish that can be made with any combination of dark leafies – I’ve also used kale and beet greens in the past – and this time my Punjabi Creamed Greens had wonderful flavor – and lovely red-flecked color – from a huge bunch of red chard and a giant bag of Polar Bear spinach.

The recipe is more involved than my usual fare, seeing as how it involves a food processor and various other implements that will of course then need to be cleaned. But it must be worth it, because these yummy, creamy, slightly gingery greens have entered standard rotation and I find myself craving them even more often than I make them, which is pretty often.

Recipe and more commentary about the dish can be found over at my post at grouprecipes.com. There was one difference between the posted recipe and this week’s preparation: I sliced up the chard stems and cooked them with the onions until tender. That’s part of what gave the dish its red and green hues.

Spinach for breakfast

I stopped buying spinach some time in college. I hated washing it, or rather, I hated eating gritty spinach, which was usually how my roommates and I ate it, since we all hated the effort it took to wash it well. Then they started selling prewashed baby spinach in those cellophane bags, so I started buying spinach again. Then I got waste-conscious, and stopped buying spinach so I wasn’t using up all that plastic. Now I’m back to spinach. And if I thought it was gritty before…

But the spinach keeps coming, every week it comes, which means this time I don’t have a choice. So I fill a tub with water, I use kitchen shears to snip the leaves off their crowns, and I plunge them in. I swish them, then I rinse them, then I rinse them again. It’s a lot of work. But I’m finding I don’t mind. The spinach is there, so I clean it. It cooks up so tender and sometimes even sweet.

I usually eat the whole batch in one sitting, at breakfast time. I don’t know why spinach has become solely a breakfast food, although I do generally wake up craving eggs and greens. So once a week I wash and wash my spinach, saute it with some garlic and olive oil, and fold it into an omelette, or tuck it under some poached eggs, or eat it alongside something like the (unfortunately not very successful) potato-and-egg bake pictured above. And, when I sit down at last to eat my breakfast spinach, I feel like I can taste the satisfying flavor that comes from grit-free spinach, accomplished sans cellophane bag.

(For some more concrete ideas on how to use spinach for breakfast, please read Spinach for Breakfast, the Sequel!)

Everything’s Better with Brandy

A while ago I came across a recipe for lentil soup with bourbon, a combination which makes me feel that through the sheer power of its ingredients alone it will conjure into being a roaring fire and possibly even some kind of alpine hut to go along with it. Perfect winter soup, in other words. Tonight I wanted something warm, and relatively simple, and filling, preferably with protein. But it turned out the aforementioned recipe called for red lentils, which I’m somehow out of, and of course bourbon, which I don’t own.

I did, however, have brown and French green lentils, a big bottle of brandy I use for cooking, and a shiny new copy of the amazing Veganomicon, a perfect Chanukah present from my mom for both Duck (vegan) and me (cookbook-obsessed vegetarian girlfriend of vegan).

I decided to make Veganomicon’s yummy-sounding French Lentil Soup with Tarragon and Thyme. At the end I added my own finishing touch – fresh spinach and a generous splash (well, more of a pour, really) of brandy. And I can now state quite confidently that, when it comes to lentil soup, at least, everything’s better with brandy.

Recipe can be found beyond the “more” below.

Meanwhile…

My new box arrives tomorrow, and the only post I’ve made this week stars a vegetable that arrived a month ago. You may be feeling anxious for me right about now, wondering how I’m going to cope with an influx of new produce that will pile into my already overburdened refrigerator, since I clearly haven’t consumed any of the new arrivals yet. Fear not, gentle reader!, for this is not the case. I simply haven’t made anything worth photographing. So I thought that since this week has been so skimpy on posts I might make one documenting the simpler fates my produce meets throughout the week.

Because I know things are always better with pictures, I provide you with one here. What could be a better emblem of simplicity than my adorable rat, Crunch, nibbling a tender leaf of kale, no more processed than when it came out of the ground?

(For those of you who are grossed out even by pet rats, think of her as that cartoon chef rat in the Disney film Ratatouille. Everyone loved Ratatouille, right?)

The Fate of Box 10:

Lettuce: has gone into many a salad, including a full-meal salad tonight with carrots, thinly sliced daikon, Rome Beauty apple, napa cabbage, Manchego cheese, and hearts of palm, with a bizarre but tasty dressing of walnut oil, lemon olive oil, rice vinegar, and apple cider (I’m working on honing my dressing skills) .
Crocodile Spinach: Sauteed with garlic and then into a frittata with quinoa and port-infused Irish cheddar. Served with tempeh bacon, of course.
Pink Lady Apples: Snacked on straight and as a light lunch with some kind of beer-cheese. (Yes, I went a little cheese-mad at Trader Joe’s)
Satsuma Mandarins: Disappeared almost immediately as they are one of my top three favorite foods of all time.
Broccoli: Straight into the compost – more aphids than green stuff in this batch. So sad!
Kale and Collards: Immediately steamed and packed alongside quinoa and various lentil and chickpea dals from Tasty Bite, for several lovely lunches to-go.