CSA week 17 wrap-up, week 18 start-up

Another week of low posting, but I did do some cooking worth mentioning.

As I thought I might, I made a kale and turnip gratin. Unfortunately, there was rather more of both than I counted on, and rather less cream and swiss cheese about than I thought. The results weren't fabulous so I decided to try a fix. Digging around, I found some dried mozzarella, a bit of cheddar a fair amount of pecarino romano and, to substitute for the lack of cream, some cream cheese. I disassembled the gratin, mixed all that in and put it back in the oven for a half hour. An improvement, but still more gooey than creamy so less than entirely satisfactory. The next day I attempted to melt the cheese down and dissolve it into a cream sauce by adding a cup of chicken broth and simmering on the stovetop. Instead, the mozzerella seized up into curds the texture of ground beef. Not bad, really. The turnips had gone soft at this point so I mixed in some noodles for texture and a couple beaten eggs to thicken up the sauce and I ended up with an odd but fairly palatable concoction. Too much of a haphazard mess to be worth a post, though.

In contrast, the pork chops in fennel and caper sauce I made was not worth a post because it's already written up quite adequately on Food.com. It's a Giada de Laurentis recipe that I didn't modify in any notable way. Pretty darn good, though. I do recommend it if you've still got your fennel around.

I bailed on the dill curry I've been talking about, though. I figure that if I've got the ingredients in the house for two weeks and I still haven't made the recipe, then that's a recipe I don't really want to make. And I'm not going to cook something I'm not interested in just for a blog post. Not to please you lot anyway.

On to this week then...



That's callaloo on the right, traded in the extras box for the kale that was in the share. I don't need any more kale. I think I'd like to make mchicha with it again as it turned out quite well the first time.

The green beans I'm going to pickle as the last batch I made turned out great.

For the leeks, I want to do something with a cream sauce. I remember liking a chicken and leeks dish my mom used to make and I haven't done anything using cream with the CSA leeks I've gotten yet.

That squash is the first we've seen in quite some time, isn't it? I know saved some squash recipes for CSA season that I haven't used. I'll have to look one up. I might go with fritters. I could go for fritters.

Potatoes and parsley I'll save until I need them which just leaves the dandelion. Oh, I'll probably have them over pasta in something simple. We haven't had any turnip greens for me to do that with in a while and dandelion should work just as well after a quick blanch.

One final note: I'm going to be out of town next weekend so my half-share is up for grabs. Nobody at work ever wants it when I offer. Do any of you? I use the Coconut Grove pick-up if that makes a difference.

Beer-braised sausage and kale

This is an odd take on gruenkohl und pinkel that I made even odder by making a few poor choices interpreting ambiguities in the recipe. I do think it has promise though, so I'm going to post about it anyway.

To back up a step, what's gruenkohl and pinkel? Well, it's beer-braised sausage and kale--Didn't you read the subject line?--and the name is pretty much the recipe, although I understand you can optionally add a slice of ham. It's a northern Germany thing and sounds appealing enough that I would have made it just like that if I didn't have a blog to fill up.

The unusual version I attempted comes from Dave Copeland, Salon.com's food writer, who has added some possibly ill-advised Italian elements which I've de-emphasized in my version.

Ingredients:
1/2 pound raw sausage, German or Polish would be best, but use your judgment, casing removed
1 medium white onion, chopped
5 cloves garlic, minced
1 pound kale, washed, de-ribbed and torn or cut into largish pieces
12 ounces dark beer
1 pound dried pasta [I used fresh which maybe could have worked if it wasn't my falling-apart spinach pasta], something thick and chewy would probably be best.
1 Tablespoon mustard [I used prepared mustard, but I see now that the recipe just says "mustard". A full Tablespoon of dried mustard is a whole lot, isn't it? I think he means prepared mustard. But not the strong yellow sort I used. Something more mellow would be best.]
salt and pepper
1 cup grated Parmesan [The combination of Parmesan and dark beer does sort of work but I'm not at all convinced it's the best choice for the job. Most beer/cheese recipes that I've found use cheddar, but not many use dark beer. Still probably a better bet than Parmesan. I could see blue cheese and dark beer, too, maybe.]

1. Heat a little oil in a Dutch oven or large pot over medium high heat and brown sausage, breaking it up. Remove to a bowl.

2. Add onions to pot and sauté until softened, about 5 minutes. Add garlic and cook briefly until aromatic, then add kale. Toss kale to get it all somewhat wilted. When there's enough room in the pot, return the sausage and add the beer. Bring to a boil, turn heat to medium low, cover and cook until kale is tender, 15-20 minutes.

3. Meanwhile, cook your pasta to al dente.

4. When kale is cooked, stir in salt, pepper and mustard. Add the cheese. When the cheese has melted into the beer, add the pasta and simmer until finished cooking, 1-2 minutes.

Served garnished with a little more cheese and maybe some more mustard too.



The batch I made ended up a weird mishmash of flavors that didn't really work too well. I think you can pretty much tell that just by looking at it. The Parmesan and the mustard particularly don't mesh and the mushy fresh pasta was a huge mistake. But, like I said, I think there's some promise here. I did like the sauce the beer and cheese formed and it did compliment the kale nicely. The kale itself was cooked well and I could see the textures working with a different sort of pasta. So avoid my mistakes and you'll probably enjoy it. Or just add kale to a standard beer cheese soup instead; That might be nice.

CSA week nine wrap-up, week ten start-up

There was supposed to be a second post this week; I made a slow-cooked kale and beans dish that look promising, but the transition from the oven to the slow cooker didn't go smoothly and, in retrospect, I don't think simmering greens for hours was ever a good idea.

Beyond that fiasco, I made a warm green bean and grape tomato salad that turned out nicely. I simmered the tomatoes in a little red wine until they collapsed and got some really intense flavor out of them. I also made a pasta topping with the dandelion greens and the turnips chopped into tiny dice. I was hoping to get some color on the turnips, but they were fine just cooked through. And I ate the canistel with a little honey. There's a brief window between under-ripe and poisonous and over-ripe and mushy where they're nice to eat without any processing.

That's just the mushrooms left. Usually I use those right away but I never got around to it this week. Maybe today then if they survived all right.

For this week, I should start with the emerald explosion in the middle of the picture. If that's escarole, then the curly endive from last week wasn't. Looks like I fell prey to the same sort of nomenclatural confusion I sorted through with the betel leaves. I'm not going to make Utica greens again to compare and contrast, though. Maybe I'll go the Italian wedding soup route instead.

Just about hidden under the escarole is a small bag of sunflower sprouts. They've got more bulk and more character than your average sprout. I could see using them in sandwiches like watercress or in a soup.

To the left is a big head of celery. I want to do a stir fry. A quick search turns up lots of options, but I'm having a hard time picking out what's most likely to work. Also, what's most likely to use more than just a stalk or two.

On the right is some spinach. Not quite baby spinach, but still too tender to treat too roughly. Maybe creamed?

Above the spinach is a canistel I'll worry about later and some parsley and grape tomatoes I'll worry about not at all.

The honey, on the other hand, I need to deal with. Added to the big bottles of avocado and coffee honey I've got (The first a bit nasty and probably only suited to savory applications; the second really really good and a bit surprising to find local to South Florida.) I now officially have too much honey. It doesn't go bad, of course, but I want to put it to use. An ice cream seems a good choice, but I need to find my own twist on it. Any suggestions?

CSA week six - Kale and ricotta salata salad

The particular sort of kale we got this week, Russian Red, has a reputation for being relatively tender so I looked around for recipes where I could use it raw. Raw kale salads were kind of a foodie trend last year so there are a fair number of recipes littering the web. I settled on one that I found on the Bitten blog where it says it's credited to Kim Severson from the New York Times. But a little research turned up that it appeared in the January 2007 issue of Gourmet where it's credited to Lillian Chou and described as "inspired by an antipasto that's popular at New York City's Lupa." I know you don't actually care about any of that stuff, but I'm a librarian so I'm picky about correct attribution even as I stretch the bounds of fair use of other peoples' intellectual property.

Anyway...

Ingredients:
1 1-pound bunch tender kale, trimmed and stemmed
1 large shallot, finely chopped (about 2 Tablespoons)
juice of 1 meyer lemon (about 1 1/2 Tablespoons)
salt and pepper to taste
1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil
1 cup ricotta salata (or feta. Anything semi-firm and salty, really. I used the 1-year aged farmers cheese that screwed up my salt cod dish last week.), crumbled or coarsely grated

1. Roll up the kale leaves and thinly shred.

2. Whisk together shallot, lemon juice, salt (not a lot) and pepper. Slowly whisk in the oil.

3. Toss kale and cheese with the just enough dressing to coat well in a large bowl. Check and adjust seasoning.

I added some small-diced tomato which I think added some pleasant brightness. Some pine nuts for crunch would be nice too, but I'm all out.


The salad has a lovely combination of light freshness and hearty earthiness as each bite fades from the dressing to the kale as you chew. And it is a bit chewy-- this is kale not baby spinach--but not at all excessively so. I found both flavor aspects to be great pairings with sirloin tip. I wouldn't want to actually add meat to the salad, though; it stands very well on its own. If you wanted to add something to make it a little heartier, maybe hard boiled egg?

CSA week 19 - garlic soba noodles with kale and scallops

So I was searching on-line for a New York Times recipe for kale that substituted soba noodles for a traditional Italian buckwheat pasta and discovered a) the non-healthified version of that dish uses cabbage and potatoes (other CSA veges I've still got) and looks really good and b) there are Japanese recipes that legitimately pair soba noodles with kale. I set the Italian recipe aside and went with Japanese tonight.

There doesn't seem to be a particular name for this dish, but a couple pages of Google results roughly agreed on the recipe. Cook the soba noodles and set them aside. Shred the kale, blanch it for a few minutes and then sauté just like the Brazilian recipe I posted about a while back. Maybe this is a recent Sushi Samba sort of thing. Garlic, shiitakes and scallions are standard additions. Scallops my own since I wanted a bit of protein.

I sautéed the kale over very high heat and it took a couple minutes before it started wilting properly. I added the shiitakes early on, the garlic just as the wilting started and the scallops and scallions right before taking it off the heat and mixing with the noodles.

For the sauce I went the lazy route and used the little packets that came with the soba. I saw a recipe that simmered the shiitakes with some kombu instead of soaking and boil that down and mix with a bit of soy instead which sounds interesting.

Deglaze the pan with a little rice wine, mix in that and the sauce, top with a little sesame and/or chili oil and, if you've got it, shredded nori and you're done.


The texture on the kale's pretty good--just a little firm to the bite, but I wish it had retained a little more flavor. The chunky bits stand up to the sauce but the little bits of kale and scallion have trouble. Their not entirely lost, but it would be nice if they stood out a bit more. I think I'd use big chunks of scallion next time, but there's not much to be done about the kale. Maybe some salt in the blanching water to brighten it up.

Also, in retrospect this would be best chilled instead of slightly above room temperature. And that means this would work as a potluck dish and you could trick unsuspecting innocents into eating kale. Interesting.

CSA week 16 - roasted kale, glazed turnips and, I dunno, a sausage or something

I took up Karen's suggestion in last post's comments to roast kale in bacon fat this evening. It's really the same recipe as kale chips with a shorter cooking time and more crowded pan so they only get crisped up around the edges. Cut out the stems, wash the leaves, toss them with plenty of bacon fat and salt, put them in the oven at 425 degrees. Roast for 7 minutes, stir, and cook for 3 more. I found it needed a few minutes more than that, but that's when to check for doneness. If you're happy with it, drop them back into your tossing bowl, dress with a little more fat or oil and a bit of vinegar and serve.

The turnip recipe I found here cooks wedges of turnip like pot-stickers--something that never would have occurred to me. Peel and slice your turnips, lay them out in a pan, dot with butter, add water to come halfway up and turn the heat on high. Bring to a boil, turn the heat down to medium and boil away the water. When the pan's dry, turn the heat back up and cook for five minutes more. Dress the turnips in a honey/red-wine-vinegar vinaigrette and serve. I'm out of the poppy seeds the recipe calls for so I used a sesame seed herb mix from Spice House instead. I don't think it made a huge difference.


The kale leaves are quite unevenly cooked depending on how thick they were and where they happened to be in the pile. There are thin crispy edges, but also thick chewy pieces. Almost, but not quite, too chewy; they're still manageable. Maybe they could have used another couple minutes in the oven. And they've got huge flavor--starting with the bacon fat, salt and vinegar--but the burst of those fades into the classic accents to kale they're meant to be.

The turnips are fabulous beyond all expectation--buttery and sweet--succulent but still with a little bite around the edges. The best of turnip flavor is front and center, not at all overwhelmed by the dressing. I declare this my new favorite way to cook turnips.

The sausage isn't bad either. I fried up a slice of spicy Portuguese chourico that pairs nicely with the kale. But I'm going back for seconds of those turnips.

CSA week 14 - Barley soup with mushrooms and kale

Last week was kale week in the New York Times. No particular reason that I saw; they just had a few different recipes over a few days. I was ready for an alternative to the Portuguese kale soup I had planned since I had made a Spanish carrot soup last week so it was easy for this recipe to catch my interest.

I've always thought of mushroom barley soup as Northern European, quite possibly due to poor geography skills. Italian barley soup--and this is just one of several recipes for such a thing you'll find on the web--is rather a surprise to me. Live and learn.

I had a lot of ideas to tinker with the recipe--add tomatoes and/or sausage, leave out most of the broth to make a barley risotto, switch out the barley for millet, change up the seasonings--but I'm tired and I don't feel like screwing around today so I just made it by the numbers. A few small changes, though: I used half butter for the fat, used a spring onion and since, like last week's collards, the kale seemed particularly tender, I didn't remove the stems.

---
March 6, 2009
Recipes for Health
Barley Soup With Mushrooms and Kale
By MARTHA ROSE SHULMAN

This is a comforting winter meal in a bowl based on a classic Central European mushroom and barley soup.

1/2 ounce dried porcini mushrooms
2 cups boiling water
1 to 2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil, as needed
1 large onion, chopped
1/2 pound cremini mushrooms, cleaned, trimmed and sliced thick
2 large garlic cloves, minced
Salt, preferably kosher salt, to taste
3/4 cup whole or pearl barley
1 1/2 quarts chicken stock or water
A bouquet garni made with a few sprigs each thyme and parsley, and a bay leaf and a Parmesan rind [I'd usually add a little soy sauce to a mushroom soup, but a Parmesan rind is just as good an umami infusion device.]
8 to 10 ounces kale (regular or cavolo nero), stemmed and washed thoroughly
Freshly ground pepper to taste

1. Place the dried porcini mushrooms in a bowl or a Pyrex measuring cup, and pour on two cups boiling water. Let sit for 30 minutes. Set a strainer over a bowl, and line it with cheesecloth. Lift the mushrooms from the water and squeeze over the strainer, then rinse in several changes of water. Squeeze out the water and set aside. Strain the soaking water through the cheesecloth-lined strainer. Add water as necessary to make two cups. Set aside.

2. Heat the oil in a large, heavy soup pot or Dutch oven over medium heat, and add the onion. Cook, stirring often, until just about tender, about five minutes, and add the sliced fresh mushrooms. Cook, stirring, until the mushrooms are beginning to soften, about three minutes, and add the garlic and 1/2 teaspoon of salt. Continue to cook for about five minutes, until the mixture is juicy and fragrant. Add the reconstituted dried mushrooms, the barley, the mushroom soaking liquid, and the stock or water. Salt to taste. Bring to a boil, reduce the heat, cover and simmer 45 minutes. Meanwhile, stack the kale leaves in bunches and cut crosswise into slivers. Simmer the bouquet garni during the 45 minute simmering, then pull it out when the soup is done.

3. Add the kale to the simmering soup, and continue to simmer for another 15 to 20 minutes. [That's a whole lot of kale. I had to add it in batches and then wait for each to wilt to make room in the pot for the next.] The barley should be tender and the broth aromatic. The kale should be very tender. Remove the bouquet garni, taste and adjust salt, add a generous amount of freshly ground pepper and serve.

Yield: Serves six to eight

Advance preparation: The soup will keep for about three days in the refrigerator, but the barley will swell and absorb liquid, so you will have to add more to the pot when you reheat.
---

I did give in to the temptation to meddle and fried up some sweet Italian sausage to added with the kale. But it was a small sausage and a big pot of soup so it didn't make much of a difference, the soup was still just kind of blah. What did make a difference was a bit more salt, a bit more pepper, a whole lot more Parmesan, just a small shot of balsamic vinegar and an extra ten minutes on the stove to get the last of the al dente out of the barley and kale. Then the flavors started to pop. A little acid brings out the best in hearty greens so the vinegar turned it from mushroom barley soup with some kale floating in it to kale soup with barley and mushrooms. I'm not sure that's entirely a good thing as I do like barley mushroom soup. Eh, the flavors will balance in the refrigerator overnight. That's what soups do.

CSA week 12 - Brazilian shredded kale two ways

Turns out there is more you can do with kale than just chips and braises. The key, it seems, is to finely shred it. It seems like that ought to be obvious, but I've been looking around and I've only seen it in Brazilian recipes. Odd. Those few recipes that specified how to go about the shredding recommended doing a chiffinade: cut the stems out of the leaves, tightly roll up five or so and slice into 1/4 inch shreds.

At this point you've got two choices. You can make a salad by adding salt, lemon juice and olive oil and letting it rest until it wilts to tenderness (overnight is best I read. I have some resting now and I'll report back later.) before adding tomatoes, pine nuts and maybe shredded carrots, beets, etc. Or you can blanch the kale for a couple minutes and then stir fry until tender and slightly browned around the edges, toss with a little salt and serve.

That second step shrinks the kale down to under half its original volume so you'll want to use more than I did for a serving. (Pork chop is pictured for scale.) The result tastes like kale but for not as long since you don't have to chew it all day. It's not exactly melting away but it's certainly tender enough. It does need a little acid to finish it off. A spritz of citrus would be fine, but I used a few drops of balsamic and find the sweetness is a nice addition too. Maybe adding a little sugar earlier like I did with the Irish cabbage recipe would be a good idea?



OK, it's tomorrow now and time for the salad. I added a little sliced red onion and tomato as you can see. The kale's wilted down to half its volume and added its moisture to the dressing so it nicely coats the extra vegetables I added. The texture is not far from the stir fried kale, maybe a little more tender. It's got the slight crunch you get in seaweed salads. The flavor has lost most of its distinctive kaleness. It's still clearly a hearty green under the dressing, but there's very little bitterness. As someone not overly fond of lettuce salads, I've got to say that I'm liking this a lot. I wish I had made more.

CSA week eight - baked kale chips

I was looking around to see if you could successfully use kale as a steaming wrapper (as mentioned in the last post) when I came across a cornucopia of interesting kale recipes in this Chowhound message board thread.

There is a nice Thai-style steamed kale roll recipe there but I got distracted by this post by daveena:
"Kale chips are my favorite! The method I use comes from "Mollie Katzen's Vegetable Heaven" - take off the stems (I chop them and put them in soup, or frittatas), wash and dry the leaves, cut them into 1" ribbons. Spray with olive oil and coarse salt, bake at 350 for 15-20 minutes, stirring once or twice.
It can be hard to get them just right - stir too infrequently, and parts burn (although gently burned parts are very tasty). Stir too often, and the whole pan comes out a little more steamed than toasted. When they come out right, though, they're fantastic - nutty and minerally - I've been known to eat an entire head of kale while watching tv..."
and I was off to my kitchen.

I wanted to add a bit of my own to the recipe and I figured this is precisely the sort of application spice mixes are best at. I had three good candidates amongst the Spice House mixes I have on-hand: Very Hot Cajun Style Seasoning, West Indies Barbecue Seasoning and Smoke House Seasoning. (Penzies no doubt has equivalent versions with slight variations on the names.) I settled on West Indies because the sweet heat should counter the bitter greens. It works for callaloo anyway.

So I prepared the leaves as per the recipe substituting in the spice mix for the coarse salt. Also I tossed the leaves after the first spray with olive oil and gave them a second spritz to get the other side before seasoning and a second toss to get everything distributed.

Here they are before cooking:








Here they are after ten minutes:









and after fifteen minutes they were done:

You shouldn't entirely trust my timing, though. In the pictures you can't see that my baking sheet has those big chunky ergonomic handles that keep it from fitting into a normal sized oven. My oven door is always cracked open a bit when I use it and I know it affects my cooking times. Exactly how varies depending on exactly what I'm cooking though. I think, but I can't swear, for a dehydrating application like this, the venting causes a breeze that speeds up my cooking times.

The dried kale has a insubstantial brittleness interspersed with chewy slightly thicker leaves that retain a strong bitter kale flavor. The West Indies seasoning does work nicely with that, but you'll still want a beverage on hand if you're going to eat a bowlful. And I liked it enough that I did eat the whole bowlful. I think I'm going to regret not having it on hand for a dinner recipe later, though.