CSA farm subscription - week 15

There's an interesting variety of vegetables in the share this week with a bit of a challenge in dealing with the small amounts without falling back on a stir fry and if my crisper drawers weren't still full of last week's share I'd be pretty enthusiastic right around now. I think I'm going to have to take next week off to deal with this backlog.

Starting off we've got a head of escarole. It's just about tender enough to eat raw, but man is it bitter. Soup is traditional and it is a good way to use up a whole head. The details I'll have to work out as there are plenty of different possibilities.

The onion, well it's an onion. It'll get used.

The tomatoes appear to the be the same meaty variety we got before but they're too small for stuffing like I did before. They should be just right for making sauce, though.

I remember coming across an interesting recipe for the zucchini and/or summer squash but I have no recollection what. If I can't track it back down, I'd like to do the fritters again now that I've got some proper corn meal.

The turnips I'll probably roast as I've concluded I like them best that way. Maybe substituting in for the radishes in the fish recipe I made a couple weeks back if nothing else occurs to me.

The broccoli I'm surprised turned up in florets instead of a whole head. Maybe there wasn't enough to go around? It must have been an an enormous amount of work to cut them down and there's a lot of perfectly palatable stem missing. Plus they seem a little worse for wear already. All that said, I'm thinking of adding them to the stir fry lined up to finish off last week's mei qing choy. Or maybe not; they do best with a heavier sauce than the mei qing choy does. The other option is to stick them on the roast list; there were instructions for roasting broccoli in the issue of Cook's Illustrated with the Almost No Knead Bread recipe (which I'm still making with minor variations every week or two. The next significant variation I'm planning is pumpernickel).

Next up are the garlic chives. My half share allotment is four, just enough to toss into some dish.

Finally, the parsley. I haven't used last week's cilantro, but I see European recipes ahead this week so there should be uses for the parsley.

Now that I'm done I should admit that this whole post has been slightly disingenuous as I've had the chicken stock you've read about above (or will on your next visit) on the boil the whole time so I actually knew what I was doing with half the turnips and a some of the parsley. I'd have to do some serious introspection to learn why I made the decision not to mention it. But since I just did I now have it both ways and I can go happily on my way without that insight.

CSA week 14 - A few thoughts on fried rice

I worked late yesterday so I get to go in late today; that gave me time to have breakfast so I decided to make fried rice.

Breakfast fried rice is a traditional in China and a few other places in east Asia and while I've certainly eaten fried rice for breakfast I don't think I've deliberately made it for that meal before. I figure there are two things that make fried rice breakfasty - bacon and eggs.

On the bacon side, I would have liked to use Chinese bacon, but the freezers were on the fritz the last time I went down to Lucky Oriental Market so I wasn't comfortable buying any. So I used the American sort. I bought some really good bacon (better than Oscar Meyer which was my previous benchmark for bacon when I judged the house brand or whatever was on sale) a while back for a recipe I ended up not making because one of the other ingredients stopped being available. (Thanks a lot Fresh Market. What with this and that lousy chicken, you're going on the list.) I recommend trying it once if you haven't; there's no going back.

As for eggs, there are two philosophies on adding them to fried rice; some people prefer to make an omelet in a separate pan, slice it up and then add it to the dish while others add the raw eggs directly into the rice. I'm normally in the first camp, but for breakfast it felt right to mix the eggs in. At first I couldn't place just why that was, but eventually I realized that it turned the dish into a porridge. Porridges--oatmeal, congee, grits or malt-o-meal--are traditional breakfast fare all over the planet. Probably because food that sticks together in a lump is the easiest to successfully transport from bowl to mouth while half asleep.

I'm not going to insult you by telling you how to make fried rice, (If you do wish to be insulted, e-mail me and I'll make arrangements.) but I do have some thoughts on the process worth sharing.

First, many recipes just add the cold rice at the end, but it's important to re-fluffify the grains by frying them at the start of the cooking. Once they've woken up, set them aside and return them to the pan at the end; it makes a big difference in texture and you don't end up overcooking the other ingredients while you're waiting for the rice to stop being crunchy.

Second, use dark soy sauce. It doesn't add a lot of extra flavor, but it does give that lovely dark color that most restaurant fried rice has.

And finally, unless you've only got a half cup of everything it does a lousy job of using up leftovers. I'm going to have to make another refrigerator-emptying dish tomorrow.

CSA week 14 - warm green bean tomato and feta salad

I had other plans for the green beans but I noticed a program listing with this recipe while scrolling through the cable guide yesterday so you can thank this morning's episode of Sarah's Secrets for this dish. I was surprised to discover Sarah Moulton airing at all on the Food Channel, even as a Wednesday morning rerun. I thought she had been banished along with Mario to give Rachel Ray and Paula Dean more airtime.

Here's her version with all the right ratios of ingredients. I didn't catch everything as they flashed up on the screen so mine turned out a bit differently. Mainly I misread 1 1/4 pounds of green beans as 1 3/4 pounds so my scaled down version is significantly beanier than the original. Also, I threw in a couple handfuls of shredded leftover roast chicken. Beyond that, I used the cherry tomatoes halved instead of chopped larger tomatoes, used red wine vinegar instead of white and garnished with fresh oregano.

But that's not enough tweaking that I feel entirely comfortable plagiarizing the recipe here. Just follow the link if you like the looks of the pictures.

EDIT: Well that was a pretty anemic post. I should have waited until this morning instead of trying to get it up just before heading to bed. I neglected to mention how the dish actually tasted. Pretty good, actually. The tomatoes cooked down into the base of a sauce enriched by the slightly melted feta. I've had orzo salads before where the cheese completely melted to create a gloppy mess with an unpleasant mouth feel. The nearly intact feta worked better as the beans, cheese, tomatoes and chicken each retained their individual character without being drowned by an overwhelming sauce.

One final thought: if you're going to try this dish (and why wouldn't you?), undercook the green beans a little at the start as they'll cook a little more waiting in the pan for the orzo to finish and you want them to retain some crispness. Also, I think adding beef or lamb would work better than chicken if you're going to add meat.

CSA week 14 - roast butterflied chicken over root vegetables

This is essentially a cross between a Good Eats roast chicken recipe and America's Test Kitchen's version. ATK's is unusual for them in that they haven't managed to overcomplicate it until it isn't worth the trouble to make. I've cooked my version twice and was thrilled with the results the first time and somewhat less so the second. I'll note the differences as I go along, but I don't know which ones made a real difference in the end result.

Step one is to get yourself a chicken. The first time I used a slightly-under-3-lbs. Greenwise chicken from Publix. The second time a slightly-over-3-lbs. regular chicken from Fresh Market. I was rather surprised that Publix (at least that particular one) had an organic-ish free-ish range option while Fresh Market didn't. Next time I'll try a full deluxe grass-fed free-range chicken wherever I can find one. Whole Foods maybe?

Step two is brining: 2 quarts water, 1/2 cup sugar, 1/2 to 1 cup salt depending on how fine grained it is. I could get my first chicken fully submerged, but not the second. I can't really see a mechanism for the slight surface exposure making a big difference, but second chicken was substantially blander and dryer. Maybe I should just have let the bigger chicken soak for longer than the suggested hour. (The short soak in a very salty brine is a ATK innovation I should point out.)

Meanwhile, preheat the oven to 500 degrees F and roughly chop up the vegetables. I used potatoes, carrots and onions the first time and added some peppers the second. ATK's recipe uses just potatoes sliced and laid out. The chunky vegetables are from a similar Good Eats recipe. However Alton uses vegetables past their prime and only uses them to hold up the chicken and add flavor to the sauce that develops. I liked the results splitting the difference made. Roll the chopped vegetables in olive oil and salt and/or whatever seasoning you're using on the chicken. Take a Tablespoon of butter out to soften and mix it with your chicken seasoning.

When the chicken is done its soak bring it over to a cutting board and cut out the backbone with a pair of scissors. Cut off any extra fat too, but try not to split the skin anywhere; exposed meat dries out. I save the backbones and other various chicken bits for making stock, but this method produces far fewer scraps than cutting a chicken into serving pieces so the bits I have accumulated have been getting freezer burnt waiting for a stock-making quorum. I may have to dump the lot.

Once the backbone is out slice the meat away on both sides of the breastbone. Turn the chicken over and flatten it; the cuts you just made will make it much easier. Take a paper towel and pat the skin dry. Slip your fingers under the skin to loosen it. Once you've made some space take pieces of the seasoned butter you made earlier and rub them into the underside of the skin. You should be able to get it distributed around both the breast and thigh areas. If you want to be tidier you can spoon a bit of the butter under the skin and distribute it from above, but I don't think it's nearly as effective. Finally, massage generous amounts of olive oil into the chicken skin. If this step isn't embarrassing, you're not doing it right. I don't think I used enough of either spices or oil on my second chicken so be generous; remember that you're seasoning a whole three pounds of meat.

Splay the chicken out on top of the vegetables making sure the meat is all covered and any loose flaps of skin are laid out flat. The skin that's exposed gets golden brown, crispy and delicious while hidden skin stays flabby and unpleasant so make the effort. At this point in my second attempt I tossed the extra bits of fat I had cut off the chicken earlier into the baking dish but I think it was a mistake as my vegetables ended up nearly submerged and didn't get the caramelization that was the highlight of the dish the first time around. That's also probably a good reason to not use the pepper either. I liked how it turned out, but the moisture it lost cost flavor in the rest of the vegetables.

And that's about it. The chicken goes into the oven for 20 minutes. Turn the pan around and put it back for 20-25 more until the thickest part of the breast reaches 160 degrees F and it looks at least as good as this:

Nothing complicated really to chopping the chicken and serving it with the vegetables. You can separate the au jus from the fat and make some gravy, but if you did things right the chicken will be juicy enough to not need it. Save it for some other application. I'll probably add it to the stock I'll eventually make as a chicken flavor concentrate. Don't toss the fat either as it's very tasty and should be good for frying or salad dressing or some such.

CSA week 14 - hot and sour soup

I have to admit up top that this didn't come out as quite the restaurant style soup I was aiming at. I can think of three possible reasons why, but I really can't be sure until I buy a bowl and do some direct comparison. My first mistake was that I used Szechuan peppercorns for the 'hot' part. This is a Szechuan recipe so that is traditional, but I can't imagine any restaurants bother with it. I should have stuck with white pepper. Second, bok (or in this case mei qing) choy isn't a usual ingredient for this soup. I think it's more of a Fukien-style soup vegetable. Third, most restaurants go too light on the sour aspect. I may have overcompensated with too much vinegar. All three of these additions add to the high notes in the flavor profile so while it seems like the soup is lacking something; it may be a lack of a lack.

So, anyway, there are two philosophies on making hot and sour soup, judging from the variety of recipes. You can either stir fry everything, add the broth, thicken it up and soups on or you can boil the broth, dump in the other ingredients in turn, cook for a few minutes, thicken and serve. If I was working with a good quality chicken stock I thick I would have gone with the first version, but since all I've got is soup from a can, I went with the latter. (As soup in a can goes, Swanson low sodium chicken broth isn't too bad.) I had accumulated a good two cups of mushroom soaking liquid in the freezer from various risottos and such so I used that along with four cups of the Swanson. All chicken broth would be fine, too. I tossed in a slice of ginger, a couple cloves of garlic and a teaspoon or so of crushed Szechuan peppercorns at the start too so they could infuse their flavors.

The rest of the ingredients begin with soaking dried cloud ear fungus (a.k.a. tree ear or wood ear) and lilly buds in boiling water. While you're slicing the soaked mushrooms into strips you've got to watch out for little knotty bits on the fungus that you'll want to cut out. And you'll need to check through the lilly buds for those still on the stem. These are both mainstays of the otherwise flexible hot and sour soup recipe, but all but the best Chinese restaurants leave the lilly buds out. (I think you can pretty fairly rate a Chinese restaurant by its hot and sour soup. The main issues are that most are neither hot nor sour, but you have to look at issues like fresh vs. canned mushrooms and the presence of lilly buds once those basic requirements are met.)

Meanwhile I defrosted a quarter pound or so of pork and sliced it into strips. In retrospect I probably should have marinated it in a bit of soy sauce, rice wine and corn starch which gives it a nice soft texture in soups and stir frys but my reference recipes didn't mention it and I forgot.

Up next are bamboo shoots and water chestnuts, mei quing choy separated into stems and leaves, tofu and scallions. The water chestnuts and scallions I chopped, the rest I sliced into strips.

Once the soup was on the boil I added the cloud ear fungus, lilly buds, pork, bamboo shoots, water chestnuts and mei quing choy stems and simmered for ten minutes.

Then I added the mei quing choy leaves, tofu and fresh mushrooms and simmered for three minutes more.

Next I added the seasonings: 1 Tablespoon rice wine, 2 Tablespoons rice wine vinegar (probably too much), 1 Tablespoon dark soy sauce, 1 teaspoon salt, and red and white pepper to taste. Once that was stirred in the next addition is 2 Tablespoons corn starch in a quarter cup of water. I brought it all back to a boil to thicken, drizzled in a beaten egg and served garnished with the scallions and a few drops of sesame oil.

As I said up top, not exactly what I was hoping for but certainly not bad. It shouldn't be hard to tweak the leftovers into a better balance.

Balsamic strawberry ice cream with black pepper

I wanted to make a strawberry ice cream while strawberries were still in season (They are still in season, right? I picked them up at the farmer's market, but that particular stall had a suspiciously broad range of produce and no farm name on a placard. I found the corn especially suspicious. Does anyone grow corn in south Florida? Can you grow corn in south Florida?), and, as usual, I had to do something to ruin the simple pleasure of a classic ice cream flavor.

Going into this I expected balsamic strawberry ice cream to be an overdone cliché on the foodie blogosphere (there are lots of folks who do stretches of slightly exotic ice cream recipes during the Summer), but I couldn't find more than one or two versions out there so there's still some point to adding my recipe.

After tossing the few groddy strawberries and eating a few of the others, my pint was down to 12 oz. Most strawberry ice cream recipes go with a full pound for three cups of dairy so I cut down to one cup of milk and a cup and a half of heavy cream.

As these were good quality fresh strawberries, I didn't want to cook them. Instead, I sliced them up and tossed them with a few splashes (1 1/2 Tablespoons?) of ten year old balsamic vinegar and a quarter cup of Splenda blend. Even if it wasn't the only bottle I have in the house at the moment, I think ten year aged balsamic would be the right choice for this recipe. It has some depth and richness of flavor but it isn't something fabulous that will get lost in the mix. As for the Splenda blend, I think I've mentioned before that I'm accommodating a diabetic coworker and I've found that the off-taste is undetectable in ice cream (although it does come out in simpler sorbets). A quarter cup is as sweet as a half cup of real sugar. Some strawberry ice cream recipes call for as much as three-quarters of a cup, but the strawberries and the vinegar are sweet too so I didn't want to overdo it. After tossing those ingredients together I let them macerate for a half hour or so.

Next I scalded the milk and cream and let it cool down to around 140 degrees F. Then I whipped two egg yolks with a third cup of the strawberry-balsamic liquid holding back any solids. I tempered the egg mixture, mixed it together with the dairy and brought it all back up to 170 degrees to create a custard. I was worried about the vinegar causing the milk to curdle, but in such small quantities it only helped in the thickening process. Many strawberry ice cream recipes call for lemon juice which has a similar effect. After cooling the mix in the refrigerator overnight I did notice some clumps at the bottom, but not a lot and they mixed back in easily in the churn. (This is in contrast to the black sapote sherbet I made a while back that had significant amounts of milk and orange juice. There were definitely gummy little bits in that. Not enough to ruin it, but it wasn't an ideal texture.) To avoid any problems along those lines I kept the rest of the strawberry mixture separate from the dairy until they went into the churn.

Before it went into the refrigerator for the night, I gave the strawberry mixture a quick turn in the blender. Not long enough to get it smooth, but enough to release more liquid. I only added about half of it to the dairy mixture for the final churning and reserved the rest for a topping. I also coarsely ground pepper into the churn as it was starting out. It's hard to say how much went in total; no more than a couple teaspoons at the outside I'd guess. It's supposed to be subtle.

The mix thickened up quite quickly and is one of the few mixes that actually succeeded in stopping the churn's motor. The motor was making some really unpleasant noises, though, so it may not have been working at full strength. I think it also helped that I turned down the thermostat in the refrigerator so both the mix and the bucket were extra cold to start out.

The texture and flavors were very nice right out of the churn. A strong strawberry flavor with unmistakable notes of balsamic and a slow burn from the pepper. That may mean that it will be too mild when fully ripened, though. I just tried a bit out of the freezer and discovered that it's frozen very solidly. I'll have to let a bowl sit out for a few minutes for a fair test after dinner.

OK, it's later now and I tried a bowl. The flavor wakes up after only a minute or two out of the freezer, but the texture isn't great. It goes straight from a crunchy solid to liquid without a creamy intermediate. I recall having this problem with homemade strawberry ice cream when I was a kid, too. Maybe it's because of the pectin in the fruit giving extra firmness to the mix? Or possibly the Splenda as sugar does have structural properties in ice cream. Microwaving the bowlful for ten seconds might defrost it more evenly and give a better result. I'll have to try that later. On the other hand, texturally, I like how you bite into a strawberry seed or two in each spoonful and then occasionally into a peppercorn. So, on the whole a success with reservations. It needs some tweaking for the ripened version but it was just fine as soft serve.

CSA farm subscription - week fourteen

A bit of a change of pace this week with no lettuce and no greens (cabbage isn't quite the same thing).

First up are the potatoes. These red potatoes are best for roasting and boiling and I think I've got enough to both accompany a roast chicken and be part of a stew. I don't have enough collards left to do a caldo verde. I'm thinking I might try a conch chowder; I've never worked with conch before.

As for the tomatoes, I've fallen a bit behind as I've just started using last week's grape tomatoes today. Luckily they do store fairly well.

The green pepper would be nice roasted with the chicken and potatoes I think.

A half pound of green beans isn't really enough to be a main ingredient in a main dish so they'll be part of a side dish. Last time I mentioned Cajun-style which fries them up in a roux. I figure if I do that and use appropriate spices with the roast chicken then a leftovers casserole will fall together easily.

The obvious choice other with the mei quing choy and shiitakes is a stir fry, but they also make up the main components of hot and sour soup. I'll have to check to see if I still have cloud ears and lilly buds. If I do, I think that's the way to go.

That leaves the mizuna and the cilantro. I have to admit that the last batches of both of these started to go bad before I got around to using them and I have no great inspiration to use them this time around either. I'd like to hear what you guys have been doing with these two while they've been rotting in my refrigerator. In fact, since the other CSA member blogs have posted anything about what they've been cooking for quite some time, I'd be interested in hearing about anything interesting you guys have made.