CSA - week 2 wrap up, week 3 start up

I've been posting pretty heavily so there's not much to say to wrap up week two. The one dish I didn't bother to post about was a butternut squash and tomato braise that I made from a recipe by Anne Burrell. I've seen her sous for Mario Batali on Iron Chef but apparently she's an executive chef and cooking show host on her own too. I did not know that. I made the recipe pretty much as written: I changed out half the canned tomatoes for fresh and ran them through the food processor instead of the mill I don't have, used a different sort of pasta and mounted the sauce with a big chunk of goat cheese she didn't call for. Maybe that was worth a full post--I dunno. It wasn't entirely successful to my mind; I'd have blended it all for a better texture and blending of flavors if I had thought of it before adding the pasta.

That leaves the sapotes which are well on their way to ripening and the avocado-shaped rock which isn't. The mint has wilted away. I did find a mojito sorbet recipe I wanted to make but it needed four times as much mint and a big pile of limes to make a full batch which doesn't fit the cooking-to-the-share attitude I'm trying to take up here.

On to the new week then.
I had a few different ideas peculating when I read through the newsletter and saw the mention of ratatouille on the back page. I've done ratatouille before and it turned out well enough that a second try isn't worth it's own post, but we've been given a ratatouille assembly kit here so it seems a shame not to. I'll do the new-fangled oven-roasted version this time, I think. Something pretty close to this recipe most likely.

So that's the eggplant, half the squash, both peppers and all the tomatoes accounted for. The salad mix is straightforward and the hibiscus is going into a tisane so they don't require much thought either. That leaves the hon tsai tai and the daikon. Nobody knows what to do with hon tsai tai; my poor attempts last year have risen to the second result in Google for the term and tops for "hon tsai tai recipe". I paired it with pork last time, but given the mustardy flavor I think beef would work better. Maybe I'll try it in sukiyaki this time. A vinegary daikon salad would got nicely with that. And that's about it. Could be light posting this week if it actually goes that way.