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 17 - orange-miso glazed scallops and bok choy

I'm not generally fond of fruit in savory dishes, but orange juice is a borderline case. I'm not saying I'm a fan, but I'm willing to consider it as an ingredient. Tonight I wanted to use at least one of the oranges as part of dinner. And also the bok choy which narrowed things down a bit.

I found a few different possibilities, but the one that appealed was this recipe I found at a vegan website, veggiemealplans.com:

1/3 cup orange juice [from one CSA orange if you juice it right]
4 teaspoons mirin
2 teaspoons rice vinegar (unseasoned)
1 tablespoon shiro miso
1 garlic clove, finely minced
1 jalapeno pepper, seeded and minced (vary amount to suit your preferences)
1/2 teaspoon fresh grated ginger
2 scallions, chopped [I was all out so I used red onion, chopped fine]

I don't think I've ever had orange with miso, but it sounded like it might work. They used it to glaze tofu, but I'm all out and I thought those flavors would work well with scallops too.

So, I mixed up the glaze and set it aside, brined some scallops, blanched the bok choy for a couple minutes (for the stems, just one for the leaves), and made some rice.

I was about to add the scallops to the pan when I had the brainwave to see if I could make a sesame crust so I dipped them in a bowl of sesame seeds first. Not great results; some of the seeds stuck, some didn't, but they all prevented the scallops from getting a good sear.


Once the scallops looked mostly done I added the bok choy and the sauce and turned up the heat to cook it down to a glaze. You may see the flaw in that plan. Once I noticed that I was over-cooking the scallops and boy choy I fished them out and let the sauce cook down for a couple minutes before putting them back, tossing them in the not-as-sticky-as-one-might-hope glaze and pouring everything out into bowl for serving.


Overcooking aside, the flavor combination is pretty good. The sauce is sweet but not cloying and complex with savory, spicy and tart notes too. The real question is would it be better with lemon instead of orange? And I'm going to say no. The orange brings a roundness to the citrus notes that pairs with the miso to tie the sauce together. Or maybe I'm talking crap there; I'm really not sure. If I'm not, then its worth trying with Myer lemons too as those may work as well without making you think "Is there orange in here?" the way this does.

CSA week 14 - Cold avocado, arugula and spring onion soup

I've adapted this from this recipe for cold avocado, spinach and scallion soup, but the only ingredient I didn't change was the lime so I'm comfortable calling this recipe mine.

Ingredients:
1 Monroe avocado (or 2 Hass), roughly chopped
1 lime, juiced
the middle bit of a spring onion (or 4 scallions), sliced
3 ounces (by weight) arugula leaves without a whole lot of stems (or one pack of baby spinach)
2 1/2 cups shrimp stock or broth
4 sea scallops, brined and dried
1 slice bacon, chopped
several grape tomatoes, chopped
a few drops of hot sauce
salt and pepper

1. Fry bacon over medium-low heat until crisp. Remove from pan, turn up heat and sear scallops in the bacon fat. Let both cool.

2. Chill all the ingredients.

3. When everything is good and cold, put avocado, lime juice, spring onion and arugula into food processor, holding a little bit back for garnish if you'd like. Add a little broth and process out the big chunks. Slowly add more broth while processing until the soup is to the texture you'd like. I aimed at smooth and creamy myself, but I could see that you might like it with a little texture or a little thinner. This will take a couple minutes so there's plenty of time to check and adjust seasoning as you go along.

4. Top soup with scallops, bacon, tomatoes and any of the green stuff you saved. Serve with toast spread with cream cheese. Makes two large servings or four soup courses.


Hmm, that's surprisingly good stuff. It's not quite creamy enough that you think there's actual cream in there, but it's impressively close. The avocado is quite mild so the flavor is mostly spring onion and arugula. I was afraid the processing would bring out the bitterness of both, but it's just nicely peppery with a little oniony burn. You could make this with baby spinach and sweet onion, but it wouldn't have any character.

It needs a good bit of salt, pepper and acid to bring the flavors out. It would be easy to overdo it and have the hot sauce and lime be primary flavors, which wouldn't be bad if you wanted to take the recipe in a Southwestern direction I suppose. I'd use chicken broth, leave out the scallops, and add a little cilantro, cumin and top with grated montery jack cheese if I were going to do that.

The tomatoes, bacon and scallops all match well, but the scallops stand out as particularly good. I'll have to remember to pair scallops with arugula in the future.

Overall, pretty nice and really easy, especially since you could prepare everything beforehand and just blend it at the last minute. And you can impress guests since it seems pretty sophisticated if you don't make smiley-faces in the bowls.

CSA week ten - Thai green beans and scallops

This is the green bean dish I mentioned last Saturday with a sauce made of peanut butter and oyster sauce. A weird combination but not unique; I found a handful of other recipes using the two so I was prepared to believe that it wasn't a typo or a prank by some culinary lunatic. There were positive reviews from people claiming to have made the dish, but I've been misled by those before so I was still wary.

The original recipe was a side dish: just beans and sauce. It's a weeknight and I wanted a one pot meal so I added the scallops instead of making a second dish (as I had originally planned before I got lazy).

I didn't bother with making-of pictures since it's a such a simple and common preparation. Here's the recipe from its Recipezaar page, unillustrated but with my modifications noted:

"Thai-Style Green Beans Recipe #179660
This recipe in from the Summer 2006 edition of Cooking for 2. I made a couple of adjustments to the recipe. We really enjoyed it served as a side with Lemon Chicken and Sesame Rice.
by PaulaG

25 min | 15 min prep

SERVES 2

* 1 tablespoon light soy sauce
* 1 tablespoon oyster sauce
* 1 tablespoon creamy peanut butter
* 1/8-1/4 teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes
* 1 tablespoon shallot, minced
* 1 teaspoon ginger root, grated [whoops. I used more like a tablespoon. Which wasn't bad at all. You need a lot to stand up to the oyster sauce.]
* 1 teaspoon oil
* 1/2 lb green beans, trimmed
* cilantro, chopped
* dry roasted peanuts
[ * six small ocean scallops, brined, cleaned and quartered]

1. Combine the soy sauce, oyster sauce, peanut butter and crushed red pepper in a small bowl; set aside.

2. Rinse the beans and place in a microwave safe dish, cover and cook until crisp tender; approximately 3 to 5 minutes depending on the wattage of your microwave. [I steamed mine for around 7 minutes instead.]

3. Remove beans from microwave, rinse in cool water and allow to drain while preparing the sauce.

4. In a skillet or wok, heat the 1 teaspoon oil add the minced shallot and grated gingerroot.

5. Cook the shallot and ginger for 2 minutes [add scallops after 1 minute] and then add the soy sauce mixture; stirring until the peanut butter is melted and the sauce is smooth.

6. If using a natural peanut butter, it may be necessary to add a tablespoon or so of water to the pan to aid in making the sauce smooth and creamy.

7. Once the sauce is thoroughly combined, stir in beans and warm in sauce. [I cooked over a quite high heat so my sauce shrank to a paste pretty quickly. A big spoonful of water thinned it out allowing me to deglaze the pan. Then I let it reduce into a nice clingy sauce as the beans reheated and got it the heck out of the pan before it pasted up again.]

8. Prior to serving sprinkle with chopped cilantro and peanuts if desired. [You should desire this. Those are important elements of the dish's flavors and textures.]"

To end any suspense, let me start by saying that the dish turned out really well. The key, I think, is that this isn't really a peanut sauce.

Usually, when I make peanut sauces they're for satay, either the Thai version with fish sauce and coconut milk or the Indonesian version that uses sweet soy sauce. Both are uncooked dips in which the fresh peanut flavor is very much to the fore. (It can easily go too far. The trick is to switch out maybe a third of the peanuts or peanut butter for tahini. That's a bonus tip for you right there.)

Here, the peanut butter has melded with the soy and oyster sauces to create a rich meaty tangy flavor. It's not impossible to pick the components out, but there is something greater than the parts created here. Over this foundation float the light notes of ginger, shallot and cilantro pairing with the bright flavor of the still slightly crisp beans and the slightly chewy scallops (which were a pretty good addition. Brining them really makes their flavors pop, too.)

Even with the beans, the sauce is pretty intense stuff, but a bowl of white rice mellowed it out nicely. Best green bean dish I've made in a while. If you haven't used yours yet, this is definitely a good way to go.

CSA week five - Things not to do with grapefruit

I tried a couple interesting things with the grapefruit this week neither of which I thought were entirely successful, but you may like them better than I did so I thought I'd post them up for comments or at least as a warning.

First up, broiled grapefruit. I had never heard of this before I stumbled across a recipe a few days ago but the same simple recipe shows up for page after page if you Google for it so maybe it's just me. It's simple enough: just pre-slice a grapefruit half, cutting out the pithy bit in the middle and separating the flesh from the rind, top with a bit of butter and a bit of sugar (Brown sugar is popular. I tried vanilla sugar.) and maybe a bit of spice, and broil for five minutes until browned around the edges. Serve optionally topped with sliced fruit or, in one recipe I just found, a chicken liver.

It looks pretty good but I found that the broiling cooked all of the bitterness and most of the sourness out of the fruit and what's left just isn't terribly interesting. Why cook a grapefruit in a way that destroys all its grapefruitiness? If you don't like grapefruit, eat an orange. Have any of you had this and can explain the appeal to me?


And second, scallop and shrimp ceviche with grapefruit and avocado. In contrast with the first preparation, scallop, grapefruit and avocado is a pretty rare combination. I only had half a grapefruit left by now so I marinated the shrimp and scallops in lemon and lime juice before adding finely chopped cilantro, shallot and jalapeño, grated ginger and olive oil for another hour's marination. And then, just before serving, in goes the diced avocado and the grapefruit supremes. I added an ear's worth of CSA corn too which added some nice color. In this case the bitterness of the grapefruit overwhelmed and ruined a perfectly good ceviche. Maybe the author (Tina Jones, it says here) assumed I'd be using one of those new-fangled grapefruit with most of the bitter bred out or at least something less uncompromising than what we got. I'll try it again tomorrow; maybe a night in the refrigerator will mellow it out.

[Added tomorrow: No, it really didn't. I ended up tossing most of it.]

CSA week four - Seared scallops with bacon, tomato, and avocado puree

I should have just wrapped a scallop with bacon, seared it, dropped it on a slice of tomato and topped it with a dollop of mashed avocado. Instead I followed this overcomplicated-to-no-great-advantage recipe from Martha Stewart.

Ingredients

Serves 2 to 4

* 2 teaspoons freshly squeezed lime juice
* 1/2 teaspoon agave nectar or corn syrup (I've been looking for something to do with the bottle of agave nectar I bought on a whim a while ago.)
* 1/4 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
* Coarse salt and freshly ground black pepper
* 2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil

* 1 medium Hass avocado, pitted (I used a Monroe)
* 1 teaspoon freshly squeezed lemon juice
* 2 tablespoons olive oil
* 2 tablespoons Brown Butter, cooled

* 2 slices bacon, cut into 1/4-inch-long pieces
* 6 to 8 sea scallops
* 1 tablespoon butter

* Coarse salt and freshly ground pepper
* 1/2 cup red or yellow cherry tomatoes, halved (I chopped up one of the CSA tomatoes instead. Not nearly as nice in either flavor or texture, really.)
* 2 lovage leaves or celery leaves, torn (I used arugula)
* Fleur de sel

Directions

1. In a small bowl, whisk together lime juice, agave nectar, vanilla, and a pinch each of salt and pepper. Slowly drizzle in extra-virgin olive oil, while continuing to whisk, until an emulsion has formed. Set vinaigrette aside.





2. Remove flesh from avocado and place in the jar of a blender along with 1 teaspoon salt, lemon juice, 2 tablespoons water, olive oil, and brown butter; blend until smooth.

3. Place bacon in a medium skillet over medium heat. Cook bacon, turning, until fat has been rendered, 5 to 7 minutes. Using a slotted spoon, remove bacon from skillet; transfer to a paper-towel-lined plate.

4. Pour off bacon fat from skillet and discard. Return skillet to stove and place over high heat. Season scallops with salt and pepper; add to skillet. Sear scallops 1 minute, add butter and turn scallops; sear 1 minute more. Remove pan from heat.

5. Spread a spoonful of avocado puree on each serving plate. Divide scallops evenly between plates; drizzle with vinaigrette. In a medium bowl, add bacon, tomatoes, lovage, and remaining vinaigrette; toss to combine. Divide evenly between plates, season with fleur de sel, and serve immediately.

First published: May 2008

Some presentation, huh?


The seared scallops are good just on their own. No complaints there. Actually, I'm kind of surprised at how well I cooked them considering how little experience I have working with sea scallops.

With bacon: better. But you knew that.

With avocado goop: about the same. It tastes of avocado, brown butter and olive oil and it's OK but it adds a lot of fat the dish doesn't need for an unremarkable result. And there was a whole heck of a lot of it. Maybe a medium Hass avocado is smaller than I thought. I used a bit more than half of a medium Monroe avocado. Even with the waterier Monroe it really didn't want to blend. The blades would clear out a space and whir away under a dome of half-mushed avocado pieces. There was a lot of stopping and starting a stirring and poking before I got something reasonable out of it. It would only be worse with a more solid Hass so I don't how it was supposed to work or how the flavors were supposed to balance out.

With the salad: eh, why not?

With the vinaigrette: blagh. Oh, I just realized I switched the quarter teaspoon for the agave nectar with the half teaspoon for the vanilla. That would explain the bitterness and intense lingering unpleasantness of the vanilla clashing with everything else on the plate. It doesn't help that the new brand of olive oil I tried turned out to be pretty bitter too.

Ah well. Even if I hadn't screwed it up, I can't imagine the world's best vinaigrette elevating this dish into something worth the trouble. Worth a try, though.