Each week, picking up my CSA is like picking up a present – I don’t always know exactly what’ll be in it (okay, that’s not entirely true, because the day of my pickup, I spend clicking over to the newsletter to see what they’re saying we’re going to have, and I love it!), but I don’t always know how I’ll prepare things. It’s a lot of fun and I’ve already learned quite a lot – like there’s so little reason to throw away most things, that I don’t know why people do… and amazingly, that I should stop being afraid of how to prep some difficult veggies. Yay! I just looked at my pick up and I’m getting fennel, which I’ve eaten but never actually dealt with, so this should be fun (I see Giada really likes it, though I’m only so so… I already know which recipe of hers I’m going to use, though!).
Week #4’s list! (Roughly, since it changes every day depending on the weather and what they’re able to harvest.)
I was pretty excited about my beets – though I’d roasted them simply in Week #1 (and loved them), I wanted to try my hand at a simple roasted beet salad. With goat cheese, which I’ve never purchased and of which I have never been a great fan.
Unfortunately, I kind of didn’t think much of the cheese melting – it’s pretty soft to begin with, y’know – and then I realized I probably should have chilled the beets first. OOPS!!!
Whatever though, it was still delicious and made for a wonderful dinner side, next to my ficelle (from Trader Joe’s – you pop it in the oven for a few minutes, which finishes the baking process, and it’s really quite awesome) that I’d layered with provolone and salame – also from Trader Joe’s, sold in a combo pack. Yummm.
My entire dinner. Pretty healthy, right?
Before I get to the other side dish, here’s what I did for the beet salad:
Peel and chop beets into bite size pieces.
Place on tin foil big enough to wrap the pieces of beet.
Drizzle lightly with olive oil, salt & pepper.
Crumple tin foil upwards around beets with a tiny slit open to let steam escape.
Roast at 375-400 for 15-20 minutes. I just kind of guessed and pulled them out, if a fork went in easily, I considered it done.
While that’s going on, take raw walnuts and put in dry skillet, tossing around a little bit as it warms up. Sprinkle a teensy bit of sugar on top and keep tossing, this will give it a sort of caramelized taste.
Pour beets into bowl and crumble goat cheese on top. Stir around and drop the walnuts on top, stirring as well.
It tasted awesome anyway – a little crunchy (walnuts), a little creamy (cheese), and sweet (the beets). Sure, next time I might chill the beets a bit first, but then, this way, every bite had cheese in it, not just some bites (which could be a pro or con depending on your tastes!). The sweetness from the beets really cut the metallic taste of goat cheese that I tend to not like, though it did come back later, coating my mouth… but the overall salad was totally worth it 🙂 The walnuts were great as well!
(BTW, if you’re ever looking for nuts – I complained about this last week when I tried to buy pine nuts – go to Trader Joe’s!!! They’re super cheap there, awesome! I store them in the freezer so they don’t go rancid.)
God, isn’t that a beautiful plate? I have Jenn to thank for the set up idea – the wooden placemat as a background standing up really strikes my fancy (as avid readers will have noticed, lol). Anyway, this dish is a shining example of not wasting. What IS it, you ask?
Well, remember I bought that new kitchen toy? And I really wanted to use it, and I wanted step 1 of any recipe to be ‘render bacon fat’ because enameled cast iron, to me, screams “gimme bacon!!!” and who am I to deny that request? So after I picked up all of my CSA goodies, I took some bacon I had in my freezer, sliced off the ends to make lardons, and rendered the bacon fat. Dropped in chopped garlic (that’s what those golden bits scattered around the plate are, gosh delicious)…
then dropped in the prepped/washed/chopped
beet greens (the tops of the beets)
Swiss chard
Japanese salad turnip greens
sugar snap peas
Stirred it all around, salt, pepper, and voila, sauteed greens, hardly any waste! (Yes, I chopped up the Swiss chard stems and added those first so they’d cook longer.) So it’s not vegetarian, but it was damn delicious. Did it NEED bacon? No… not really. But a squeeze of lemon left it feeling less greasy/oily and just delicious, bringing it to new heights (seriously the lemon juice cut right through that fat, yum). It was really quite lovely 🙂
Mmm… delicious. (And would have made it to bento had I any leftovers, haha.)
Bok choi is something I actually buy semi-frequently and eat often enough that I knew what to do with it already. But here’s a photo of one of the staples of my diet during the winter, especially rainy days, a dish I mention often. Miso udon with XO dumplings (spicy pork dumplings with chili peppers and XO sauce in them), and bok choi on top (the bok choi is cooked quickly in the broth before I plate it all up). Mmm. This is technically more food than one person my size/weight/etc. needs to eat for dinner, but it’s so comforting and soothing on a cold, rainy day, that I can’t help but gobble it all up. It was raining the day I made this…
Happy eating!!!
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