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.

Lard bread

I'm making a different sort of bread this week--bread with stuff in it!

Lard bread is a traditional Italian loaf. Apparently, Astoria, Queens in New York is known for them but I don't recall seeing them when I lived (just slightly to the south of) there. On the other hand, my neighborhood was mostly Greek, Brazilian and North Indian so the local Italian bakeries probably weren't the best around.

Lard bread, as you've probably guessed by now, is made with lard and plenty of it. I looked around for recipes as usual. There are a lot of recipes for crepe-like dishes and schiacciatas that use a lot of lard and some sweet lard loaves too, but I was looking for something similar to the loaf featured in a food/travel show I saw that included salami, cheese and lots of black pepper along with the generous amounts of lard. I settled on a recipe posted to chow.com by Patricia Grande that wasn't quite the same, but was different in interesting ways I hadn't tried before. Here's her recipe halved to bring it down to a more reasonable size.

But before we get to that, more on the lard. This is Miami so I could have just gone out and bought some but I've been saving in the freezer fat trimmed from the various cuts of pork I've cooked over the last couple of months. I figured it would come in useful eventually and look, hey, it did. Easiest way to deal with it was to just drop the frozen pork fat into my crockpot, turn it on, cover, and come back eight hours later.


I was a bit concerned about the smell since pork rendering plants don't have sparkling reputations in that regard but it just smelled like pork fat. Although after a while it, my apartment and I all just smelled like pork fat and I can see why that might be an issue. From a full bucket of fat scraps I ended up with a bit over a cup of fat and pile of pork cracklin's. I strained those out, cooled the lard and was ready to go on the bread.



Lard Bread

Dough:
1 envelopes dry yeast (5 tsps.)
around 1 cup warm water
2 1/2 cups unbleached bread flour
1/4 tsp. salt
1 oz. cold lard, cut into tbs. size chunks
On a large wooden board, make a mound of flour and mix in the salt. Distribute the lard over and rub into the flour. Sprinkle the yeast/water over and begin kneading. Knead 8-10 minutes, until smooth and elastic, adding either flour or water as required (needed?! - OY!)Form into a ball, put into a greased bowl, cover with a towel and rise til doubled, about 1 1/2 hours.

[I used my mixer for the kneading, but I cut in the lard by hand. The original recipe had a typo and only called for a half cup of water for five cups of flour so I had to judge the hydration by eye. I think I'm getting the hang of this as I had no problem slowing mixing the water and determining when I had enough.]



Filling:
2 oz. lard, at room temp
1 oz grated Parmeggiano Reggiano
1 1/2 Tbs. grated Pecorino Romano
1/2 Tbs. coarse ground black pepper (or more to taste)
1/3 c. salami (or prosciutto, or a mixture of both) cut into small dice
3 oz. provolone cut into small dice
(You may also use all one or the other, or use crumbled cooked Italian sausage meat - although if you can't get this bread maybe you can't get good sausage either.)

Grease and flour a baking sheet. Punch dough down after it has risen and turn out onto floured board. Roll into a rectangle 1/2 inch thick, 16 inches long, 12 inches wide. Spread the lard evenly over the dough. [I wish I could get a picture to turn out of the slathered on lard. It's vaguely upsetting but also looks pretty tasty.] Sprinkle with remaining filling ingredients (I like more pepper, you may too).



Roll up like a jelly roll, starting at the long side. Pinch all seams to close tightly then bend into a circle shape, pinching together the joining. Place on sheet and cover with a cloth. Rise until doubled, at least one hour. Bake at 350 for one hour, until light brown. Try to let cool (at least a bit) before slicing.





[Argh! Just now while I was typing this in I realized that I forgot the Parmesan and Romano! No wonder the results are a little blah! Dang.





Other than that, though, it's a nice loaf of bread. The lard makes it light, tender and flaky the same way it does in pie crusts. I added an egg wash to get a nice golden brown crust although, because of the lard, the crust keeps flaking right off. Despite the lack of Parmesan, the flavors still pretty good; if you like salami and provolone sandwiches, here's one ready-made. Some more of each wouldn't be a bad thing though. Just about enough of the black pepper, though.

Despite my lapse there, I'm pretty happy with how I managed to make the dough, roll it out, roll it up and get it baked without mishap. Pretty advanced bread-making technique there. What other odd variant should I try next?


I've been snacking on the bread all afternoon and now I've got a tummy full of lard. I don't feel so good.

Slow Foods - Terra Madre and Piemonte dinner

Last night I went to a Slow Foods dinner held at Blu Pizza e Cucina in Mary Brickell Village. Beyond a good meal there were a couple reasons for the dinner: reports from, or possibly celebration of, the group delegates who were sent to the Terra Madre convention in Torino and a tour of the regional cuisine of the Piemonte region of Italy. Unfortunately there were audio issues so, from my seat in the corner, I could only catch little bits of all the announcements and speeches. From outside reading I know that Terra Madre covers your general Slow Food topics: sustainable agriculture, organic certification, GM foods, preservation of local foodways and ingredients and all that. The speeches I couldn't hear were pretty short so I don't think the delegates talked much about what they learned; maybe they'll write up a report of the Slow Food Miami website?

I did catch that either Blu's owner or chef is from Piemonte , but I didn't realize until I looked it up that Torino is in Piemonte (although the map on the back of the menu should have been a clue) which ties things together. I would have liked some explication of just how this meal ties into the whole Slow Food ethos: is Piemonte cuisine endangered? I know that Piemonte is known for its truffles so the meal is heavy with those. Are we using any other local ingredients? Anything local to Miami? Anything organic or fair trade or the like? How was this more than just a nice meal? Maybe that was all there but I couldn't hear it through the feedback and distortion.

What that leaves me with is the meal, so I ought to talk about that. Four courses, each with paired with a wine from Piemonte. I'm assuming that it was all straightforward traditional Piemonte dishes without a lot of chefly innovation so I'll talk more about preparation than conception. And let me apologize for the quality of the photos as usual. I thought I had plenty of light this time around but I guess not... It turns out the adapter I use to get the pictures from my phone to my computer is no longer working so no pictures until I get a replacement. ...OK, I've got a replacement and did a bit of adjustment to improve visibility. They're not great, but they're good enough to be useful so I'm putting in the pics.

First course was an antipasti trio: vitello tonnato, bagna cauda and polenta e fontina. That first one is thin slices of veal with a tuna-caper sauce. I've seen tuna sauces for meat before and have been skeptical of the idea. This dish was pretty much what I expected: it tasted of overcooked tuna and capers with the mild veal rather lost beyond adding its meaty texture. The shredded celery and carrot garnish helped balance it out, but you've had tuna sandwiches so you knew that.

The bagna cauda was served with a big platter of crudites, but with a communal bowl of the sauce and no serving utensils it was a bit tricky to deal with. Since it's just olive oil, butter, garlic and anchovies you have to make an effort to screw it up; this example could have used a little salt and could have been warmer, but those are just quibbles. One takeaway from this meal is that fennel is particularly good with bagna caude; I did not know that.

The third antipasti was a grilled corn meal polenta (are there other sorts?) with a couple stalks of asparagus on top, Fontina cheese melted over and truffle sauce (a wine reduction I believe) around and about. There's a strong funky, but not unpleasant smell from the sauce, but again the lack of serving utensils means actually getting some is problematic. The polenta is nicely prepared--fluffy with crispy bits from the grilling. I can never get it right myself. The sauce is a bit overpowering, but it works well with the Fontina so that's nice enough.

The wine is Gavi di Gavi, La Meirana, Broglia, a light, slightly sweet and flinty red. Not a bad choice considering all of the different flavors it had to pair with.

Next course is gnocchi con funduta e infusione di tartufo which even my non-existent Italian can translate into housemade potato gnocchi with a Fontina cheeses fondue and a white truffle infused olive oil. Or at least the general outlines of that. Nearly forgot to take a picture this time; the not-half-eaten plate looked rather nicer in a minimalist sort of way. The gnocchi is creditably made--feather-pillow texture, not the down-pillow light one occasionally encounters or the more common Tempurpedic lumps. Personally, I like the chewy outer layer, but maybe that's just me. The fondue to fairly delicate so you can taste the potato and the truffle brings out the earthy aspects of the Fontina nicely. That's takeaway number two: match Fontina and truffles. I thought the dish could use another element--a sprinkling of Parmesan was nice but didn't really amount to a full extra flavor component--to work as an independent dish, but this is just a primo piatto so it's doing what it's intended to.

The wine was Barbera d'Alba Damilano which was nice enough on it own--light crisp berries with a fast fade to a spicy afterimage on the palate--but was too strong to pair with the fondue.

Secondo piatto was trota ai funghi porcini a.k.a. rainbow trout draped over a truffe-potato gratin in a pool of baby Porcini wine sauce. The same wine sauce as the polenta, actually, I think. The trout is a nice texture--not quite flaky but not undercooked--and about as flavorful as you can expect from trout which means that it's completely overwhelmed by the sauce. But the sauce is aromatic with herbs and mushrooms and rich with wine and butter so I'm not complaining. That said, the star of the plate is the gratin. This is the first dish where the truffles are more than just punctuation. Their flavor is infused through the creamy cheese layers and really punches up the flavor to a level that potato gratin doesn't usually get to.

The wine is Barbera d'Alba, Damilano which is dry, round and full of tannins. I'd like drinking it on its own and it's big enough to stand up to the sauce but the two wipe eachother out of the mouth. It's alternation, not harmonious accompaniment.

Then came inaudible speaches from the Terra Madre delegates way across the room. I'd say at least they tried but I think this sort of thing does more harm than good. It's an interminable lull in the meal just when the roudier diners are getting drunk enough to give their own comical suggestions of what they might be getting at over there. We could catch enough that they knew these folks went to a conference but no idea exactly what or why. That sort of information is important to brand Slow Food dinners as something more than just a foodie event. There are non-members at every dinner who come in thinking Slow Food is a group of crockpot enthusiasts and relying on random people at each table to explain the philosophy seems an unreliable strategy.

Once all that was up, the dinner closed up with a doce: pannacotta alle castagne: chestnut pannacotta with Amaretto-creme anglaise. My favorite of the evening. First off, the pannacotta was actually creamy instead of rubbery. I don't think I've ever encountered one that didn't have an appalling texture before. To accompany that was a triple cookie topping: first a thick crumbly top (bottom while it was cooking I suppose) to the pudding, then a little spice cookie on top and on top of that what looks like a little piping of whipped cream is actually a tiny vanilla meringue cookie. I'm not usually a fan of that sort of trickery in food since it's most often cleverness to the detriment of flavor but this was a pleasant surprise and, oddly, one that most people at my table unknowingly left on their plate. As for the flavor, I'm not much of a fan of either chestnut or amaretto and, to tell the truth, the combination was rather bitter, but that's where the only really successful wine pairing of the evening came in. The wine was a Moscato d'Asti Marenco: syrupy sweet and sour and tingly on the tongue. I'd say it tasted of soursop if anyone would know what I was talking about. Fruity anyway and a synergistic combination with the dessert where the flavors played interestingly against one another with each new sip or bite.

And then everyone ran for the exits in fear of more incomprehensible speeches.

Overall, I'd say, foodwise, this dinner was more successful than not, particularly considering the knowledge I've gained about Piemonte cuisine. The big minus was the wine pairing for which it appears Vias Imports is to blame, not the chef. On the event side of things there's some room for improvement. And now that I've mouthed off about it I think I'm obliged to volunteer and get it right next time. I generally sit uncomfortably waiting for the mingling to die down before these things anyway so I might as well be making myself useful.

CSA week two - Roasted butternut squash, sage and brown butter risotto

This recipe was inspired by a pasta with butternut squash and brown butter recipe from A Good Appetite--a resource you definitely should check out for ideas for using non-Miami-specific CSA items. Kat has been cooking and posting her Minneapolis CSA all summer long so there's big backlog of interesting recipes to try out.

I decided to switch from a pasta to a risotto just to keep things interesting and roasted the squash to boost the flavors a bit. Those two impulses worked against each other actually so you may as well just pan fry the squash if you want to make this dish.

I also cut the recipe down to one big serving since risotto is no good unless it's fresh off the stove. It'll serve two if you have a salad with it I think.

I also did some research on tips to improve risotto that I'm including in the procedure since they seemed to work out.

Ingredients:
1 Tablespoon unsalted butter
1 cup butternut squash, peeled seeded and cut into 1/2- to 3/4-inch cubes
1 1/2 cups chicken broth, or vegetable broth (that's just under one can conveniently)
1 Tablespoon olive oil
1/4 cup shallot, chopped
1/2 Tablespoon fresh sage, finely chopped
1/2 cup arborio rice
1/2 cup dry white wine
1/2 Tablespoon Italian parsley, chopped
2 Tablespoons goat cheese, crumbled
Salt and pepper and fresh grated nutmeg to taste

0. Preheat oven to 400 degrees.

1. Toss the butternut squash cubes with a little olive oil and salt and roast in a single layer in a 400 degree oven for 15 minutes or until just barely turning tender and brown. [That may be under 15 minutes for you. My pan doesn't quite fit in my oven so my oven door was ajar which I think slowed the cooking down. You want the butternut squash half-cooked so you can add it to the risotto later which kind of defeats the purpose of roasting because all the good stuff happens in the second half of cooking which you're not doing.]

2. Heat the olive oil in a medium pot over medium high heat until shimmery. Add the shallot and sage and cook until the shallot is translucent and slightly browned. Remove leaving as much of the oil as you can.

3. Add more oil if necessary and add rice. Cook for seven to ten minutes, stirring frequently. The rice will turn translucent pretty quickly. Cook it until it turns opaque again and starts smelling nutty. [This bit is controversial. Many recipes say just to cook for two or three minutes to get to the translucent stage. The longer cooking time gave me a fluffier result, but the texture is kind of a puffed-rice sort of fluffy so I don't know if that's an ideal result. On the other hand, when I only cook the rice for a few minutes I find that it usually ends up a little crunchy in the middle which is no improvement.]

4. Heat up your wine in the microwave or on the stove. Once that's warm, heat up the stock too. Keep that hot as you go along.

5. When you're happy with the rice add the wine and turn down the heat to medium low. Cook, stirring often (which is not as often as frequently), until the wine is completely evaporated.

6. Add the shallot and sage back into the pan along with a couple ladles of stock. Cook, stirring not quite so often unless you really want to, until the stock is nearly evaporated. You might want to turn down the heat too.

7. Add more stock and cook some more. When the rice is about half done and the stock about half gone stir in the squash. This might also be a good time to add some salt and pepper.



8. Meanwhile, in a small pan, melt the butter over medium heat and cook until it is nicely browned.



9. Keep adding stock and cooking until the rice is where you want it or you run out of stock. And decide how wet you'd prefer your final results. When everything is pretty close to the way you want it, take the pot off the heat, stir in the brown butter, goat cheese (I used goat cheese with a mixed pepper coating for a bit of extra interest), parsley and some more sage wouldn't be a bad idea. Cover and let rest for three minutes. Uncover, check for seasoning and add the nutmeg. Don't neglect the nutmeg, it's surprisingly important in making the other flavors pop.

And if you did everything right they should be popping all over the place. You probably already know that butternut squash, brown butter and sage are a great flavor combination so I'll just say that a nicely creamy risotto is a fine delivery mechanism for those flavors. Oh, I forgot to add some of the leftover crab! I just did a quick taste test with the last bite of risotto and crab is just fabulous with the squash and sage. What wasted potential! OK, I've got another squash left. Maybe a squash/sage/brown butter/crab quiche?

CSA week two - Braised Chinese lettuce with dried shrimp

This is a recipe from the Thousand Recipe Chinese Cookbook that I've mentioned several times before. Like most of those thousand recipes, it's pretty simple but open to elaboration. And as usual for me, my elaboration got a bit out of control. Still, things turned out fine. Or should I have left some suspense?

The recipe calls for a full pound of Chinese lettuce but my half share didn't include nearly that much. When I added my leftover bok choy I got about half a pound so the recipe was workable.

Ingredients:
4-5 dried shrimp
2 dried black mushrooms (Both my shrimp and mushrooms were pretty small so I doubled these numbers back up to the original 8-10 and 4. You can judge from the pictures of the end result whether I had too much.)
1/4 cup ham (I used some leftover country ham I had lying around)
1/2 pound Chinese lettuce and/or bok choy
1/4 cup sliced bamboo shoots
1 Tablespoon oil
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup mushroom soaking liquid
1/4 cup picked crab (It doesn't store well so I'm adding it to everything this week until I run out.)
1 Tablespoon soy sauce
1/2 teaspoon sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons cornstarch
sesame oil

0. Separately soak shrimp and mushrooms in hot water. Reserve mushroom soaking liquid. The shrimp soaking liquid is kind of nasty. Toss that.

1. Coarsely chop lettuce. Fill a large pot with water, bring to a boil and add lettuce. Blanch lettuce for 1 to 2 minutes then drain.

2. Dump out water and reheat pot over medium high heat until it's dry. Add oil. Heat until it's shimmery. Add shrimp and ham and stir fry 2 minutes. Add lettuce, stir fry to coat with oil then sprinkle with salt. Add bamboo shoots and stir fry one minute more.

3. Add mushroom liquid. Bring to boil, turn heat down to low, cover and simmer 10 minutes.

4. Add mushrooms, soy sauce, sugar and crab. Turn the heat up a little compensate for heat lost while you were doing that, re-cover, and simmer 10 minutes more.

5. Add cornstarch (mixed into a Tablespoon of cold water). Stir and heat until the sauce thickens up a little.

6. Serve topped with a drizzle of sesame oil or chili oil might be nice too.


Surprisingly, the lettuce hasn't fallen apart after all that cooking. It's soft to the bite, certain, but not mush, and the leaves trap the sauce quite nicely. There's some textural interest from the mushrooms, ham and bamboo shoots so soft lettuce is fine. The sauce has picked up a lot of flavor mainly from the shrimp and soy sauce, but you can taste the lettuce in it too which I didn't expect. I think I overdid the salt a little since it came in from so many sources, but otherwise I'm happy with the results. Next time I'll serve it over noodles which, texturally, would be a better match than rice. As for the lettuce, I think the likes of Romaine would stand up to braising well. I'm not sure how much the different flavor would change the dish though. I'll have to try it and see.

CSA week two - Callaloo

First up this week is callaloo. Looking around at recipes on-line I get the impression that callaloo is a very vague term that covers any soup or stew that has braised callaloo as it's main ingredient. I chose a Trinidadian variation I found on Recipezaar because it included Maggi seasoning cubes and golden ray cooking margarine. I'm not going to use either, but the fact that it kept those traditional Caribbean ingredients is a good sign. Also, it includes a bit of butternut squash substituting for west Indian pumpkin which seemed a nice bit of happenstance.

The first problem was adjusting the recipe for the amount of callaloo I've got. I'm not sure how to interpret the recipe's call for 15-20 dasheen leaves. (As best as I can tell, different types of greens are used in making callaloo on different islands around the Caribbean and whatever the locals use, they call callaloo. On Trinidad, they use dasheen which I'm hoping is what I've got.) I can't take that literally both because the leaves vary a great deal in size and because, even using the largest leaves, 15-20 won't make the 6 to 8 servings this recipe's supposed to make. After picking off all of the leaves I measured them out and I seem to have around 3 cups worth. Looking around at other recipes that measure out the leaves by volume and assuming standard serving sizes I need to cut down this recipe by three quarters. That gives me:

* 1/2 tablespoons vegetable oil
* 1/4 medium onion
* 1 garlic cloves, minced
* 1/2 tablespoons chopped celery [which I skipped because I'm not buying a whole head of celery for that tiny amount]
* 1/16 cup fresh thyme [none handy so I used dried]
* 1/8 cup chopped chives
* 4 okra, sliced [which I skipped because stewed okra is icky]
* 1/8 cup chopped west Indian pumpkin (substitute butternut squash)
* 1 CSA half-share dasheen, washed and coarsely chopped
* 1/4 cup coconut milk
* 1/4 Maggi seasoning, cube plus [this is just bullion so I used stock]
* 1 cups water or chicken stock
* 1/2 live blue crab, cleaned and washed in lime juice (or 5-6 pieces salted beef or salted pigtail) [I didn't like the looks of the crabs I saw at the market so I bought a jar of pre-picked crab. Also, in the recipes I saw it looked like any smoked pork product would do. I cut up some smoked ham and used that too.]
* 1/4 whole scotch bonnet pepper (Congo pepper) [Caribbean cuisine uses the hottest possible pepper and prepares it in the wimpiest possible way. I presume that's because that's the only peppers they have to use. I split the difference by using half of a more reasonable Serrano pepper]
* 1/2 tablespoons golden ray cooking margarine [or butter]
* 1/4 teaspoon salt (if using Maggi cube taste first before adding salt or the soup will be too salty.)

1. Put salted pork [or beef or cod if you're using anything of the sort] pieces in a pot and cover with water. Bring to a boil. Drain off this water. Repeat this process to draw off the excess salt from the salted meat.

2. Heat the oil in a large pot and add the onion, garlic, celery and fresh herbs [and ham]. Sauté until fragrant, about 2 minutes. Add okras, pumpkin and dasheen leaves and sauté for another minute or so. Add the coconut milk and stock or water, crab and hot pepper.

3. Keep an eye on that hot pepper use one that is not bruised. You DO NOT want that pepper to burst while cooking. The heat from the burst pepper will overpower the other flavours. [So why ask for trouble if you don't need to?]



4. Bring to a boil and reduce heat to a simmer. Cook uncovered for about 35 minutes.



5. Taste and add salt if needed.
6. Remove hot pepper and crab or meat, [Whoops! I should have left my chunks of ham large. It took me some time to pick all the little ham pieces out during this step.] and swizzle the callaloo, or put in a blender or you can use an immersion type blender, and beat until smooth. Return the crab or meat pieces to the soup. Add the cooking margarine or butter. Simmer for 5 more minutes. Stir well. [I used the blender]
7. Serve hot as a soup on it's own or as a side dish. [or over rice]

And the results are...OK. The texture is a creamy sauce about the same as palak paneer; Okra definitely would not have been a help. The flavor is rather mild, easily diluted by the rice or overwhelmed by the Pickapeppa hot sauce I used so I didn't want to thin it out into a proper soup even if I did screw it up to get it this thick (which I don't think I did). The ham doesn't stand out and there's a hint of the crab but the flavor is mostly just the callaloo. The differences from spinach are subtle. There's a slight pungency and a chard-like bitter aftertaste that's interesting, but not something I'd aim at deliberately. A pinch of sugar mixed in helps with that and a pinch of salt brightens the flavors up. No real heat despite the fact that I chopped up the pepper and put it back in the pot. Overall, it's not bad, but it's not great either. Next time I think I'll try a different variation--something with tomatoes maybe.

CSA week 1 round-up and week 2 start-up

First up I'd like to thank Marge, who whoever's writing the newsletter, for the more prominent mention this week. I wrote up a little welcome post two weeks ago, but I guess nobody noticed the blog addresses in the little print at the bottom of the last page as there wasn't a hint of new readers in my traffic stats. Also, possibly the relatively familiar vegetables and lack of time pressure meant that people weren't seeking out recipes.

Anyway, I wrote up what I did with most of the vegetables, but there are still some unaccounted for. Unusually, I did mainly what I said I might do in the weekly start-up post. All of the cucumbers and half of the dill went to refrigerator pickles. I used this recipe for a change of pace from my usual except she forgot to actually include dill in the ingredient list so I just judged a reasonable amount to add to the jar. It takes a few weeks for the best flavor to develop so it'll be sitting in the back of the refrigerator for a while before I know how it turned out.

Half of the avocado went to a rather nice guacamole I put together without using a real recipe. I used culantro from my garden instead of the usual cilantro, but I didn't notice any real difference. And I think this is the first time I've added cumin which I think played off the other flavors nicely.




The mizuna I stuffed in rolled chicken breasts and tuna niçoise wraps (good quality tuna, white beans or chick peas with a bit of the canning liquid to moisten, some sweet herbs, tomato and greens. Yummy.) and this alternate presentation of the suon nuong xa I made (which also used some avocado slices). A rice paper wrapper would have been an improvement, but even with just a tortilla, it's a great sandwich. I'm surprised it isn't a staple at those international wrap sandwich shops.

And on to week two. A lighter share this week which is good as I had some trouble getting through everything last time. To start, there's the callaloo. From last year I know that it goes bad fast so I better use it soon. I still haven't had a chance to make callaloo, the dish, as all my callaloo, the vegetable, rotted before I got around to using it last year, so that's my plan for it this time.

The Pei Tsai I'm going to stir fry. In one of my cookbooks, there's a lettuce stir fry recipe on the page opposite a cabbage recipe I've used many times and I've been meaning to try it for a while now. And since I've got the right sort of lettuce at last now's the time.

The butternut squash is nice roasted or in soup or roasted and then in soup. These little ones would make a lovely presentation if they were stuffed, but I'm not likely to have anyone over for dinner so that would just make me sad. Soup it is, then.

The avocado I'd like to find a Caribbean recipe for, but a quick search isn't turning much up. Soup maybe if I roast the squash.

The tomato is a meaty variety that can handle being cooked. Maybe I'll stuff it or it could go into the Thai fried rice I have planned to use up the last of last share's bok choy and lemongrass.

The black sapotes worked well in a sherbet last year. I've got fewer this time around so they won't be the main ingredient if I try that again. I think I may substitute them into my piña colada sherbet recipe and see how that works. I've got a while before they ripen so no rush in deciding.

Finally, the mint. I've never really had much use for fresh mint, particularly this large amount of it. Mojito sorbet?