CSA week 11 - garlicky shrimp and greens tacos

Just a quick post here since this is a close variation of the steak and greens tacos I made back in week seven. The only changes were that I used the swiss chard and radish tops for the greens (and saved the chard stems for later), added a jalapeño and a dash of red pepper flakes in with the onion, put in four chopped extra-large shrimp with the garlic for the last two minutes of cooking, added a little water with the greens to deglaze the pan and replaced the queso fresco with slices of avocado and breakfast radish.

Normally, I'd save this for the weekly wrap up, but it turned out so well and it's such a quick and easy weekday dish I wanted to suggest it before you used your swiss chard for something else. The flavors of the browned onions, garlic, greens and shrimp blend beautifully. The textural contrasts of the creamy avocado and crisp radishes add an elevating aspect that was lacking in the steak and greens version. And I think just adding the step of deglazing the pan added a lot since the greens hold on to pan sauce so you get a nice burst of flavor with each bite. It makes things a little drippy but well worth it.

Tropical cheesecake ice cream

This isn't quite the ice cream I set out to make. The original idea here was a) to test Jeni Britton's eggless ice cream recipe in a more complicated preparation than straight vanilla and b) use the leftover CSA carambola.

1 carambola
2/3 cup chopped pineapple
1 Tablespoon salted butter
1 Tablespoon brown sugar

The first change was because the carambola was a bit on the small side to flavor a full batch of ice cream. So I added a handful of frozen pineapple. That's not the best quality stuff so I knew I couldn't just use it straight. Instead I broke up the frozen pieces, sliced the carambola, sprinkled both with a mix of brown sugar and softened butter and put them under the broiler for around eight minutes. Broiling isn't the most popular way to cook fruit but I wanted the caramelization intense direct heat would give me which rules out roasting and I wanted to retain the released juices which rules out grilling (even if I had a grill). I think the broiling worked well, deepening and complicating the simple bright flavors of the fruit.

1 1/3 cups whole milk
7 ounces heavy cream
1 scant half cup sugar
1 Tablespoon light corn syrup
1 pinch salt

Next, I cut down the ice cream base recipe by a third since it makes a pretty big batch and I only had 3/4 cup of fruit to add. The original recipe called for simmering the milk and cream for four minutes with a vanilla bean to infuse the flavor so I figured I could simmer with the fruit and get a similar effect. It was kind of weird, but the milk mixture started thickening up before I added the corn starch. I did boil the milk a little high for a while; maybe that was it, or maybe it was a chemical effect from the fruit (although I can't find any indication either fruit can do that). I dunno.

1 scant Tablespoon cornstarch
2 Tablespoons cream cheese, softened

So when I added the cornstarch (mixed with a little of the milk) to the mix, it thickened up into a custard-like consistency. And that got even thicker when I mixed in the cream cheese. That cream cheese was the impetus for the third big change. It was from the same container of cream cheese I used in the original recipe a couple weeks ago and you know how cream cheese gets stronger in flavor over time. With that flavor in the mix, it tasted like cheesecake. Nothing wrong with that even if it wasn't quite what I was aiming at. I decided to go with it by gathering about a half cup of crumbs from my last batch of oat bars (I made it with pumpkin butter as I said I would. Not bad, but I should have added a bit of lemon.) to mix in after churning to simulate a crumb crust.

After a night in the refrigerator, the mix was seriously thick. Mixes that thick usually stop the churn's motor before they can get a good amount of air churned in, but this one, because it was a small batch, managed to wind itself up around the paddle leaving the bucket to spin freely, stopping the churning early without stopping the motor.






In went the crumbs and then a night in the freezer. Here's the final version:

The extra thickness out of the churn translated to a pretty solid, but still scoopable ice cream out of the freezer. There are actually a few issues there; that thickness certainly, but also how packed full of solid bits this particular flavor is, and third, the ice cream began melting with some alacrity as I was scooping it out of the churn-bucket which means I immediately lost a fair bit of the churned in air. In the future I think I'll stick a dishtowel in the freezer to use as a buffer between the ice cream carton I'm filling and the warm metal top of my kitchen cart.

All those solid bits I mentioned mean that this is a pretty chewy ice cream. The strong cream cheese flavor I was getting earlier is hard to find between the crust crumbs and bits of caramelized fruit in each bite. The former is a little prominent over the latter so I'd make a note to use less next time if I had any idea how much I used this time. On the other hand, the fruit flavor has spread out into the ice cream itself more. It's subtle until you bit into a bit of fruit, but it's there. Pineapple and carambola don't identifiably jump out at you (particularly since their flavors were altered by the broiling) but that light vague tropical flavor permeates the whole. Leaving the fruit a little chunky (and leaving the skin on the carambola) was a good idea; I like all the different textures I'm getting and the variation in flavor in each bite. There's a good bit of sugar in each of the components so the whole is pretty sweet, but I think there's enough else going on to keep it from getting cloying. Overall, I'm really liking the combination and complexity of this recipe and the Jeni-style base is an important component and not just a good way to avoid separating eggs. It's got a real Ben & Jerry's vibe to it, too. Nobody else has tried it yet, but I think it's going to go over well.

CSA week 11 - filet mignon with Gorgonzola creamed arugula and rosemary garlic roasted potatoes

I don't often make the classic American dinner plate of meat, starch and vegetable, but I wanted to make the arugula into a side dish, I've got these potatoes here and half the tenderloin I bought is still taking up precious freezer space so it seemed like the way to go.

The filet mignon I seasoned with salt and pepper then cooked a couple minutes on each side and a minute on each edge in plenty of butter and olive oil at medium high heat. Nothing fancy there.

The potatoes are the recipe Fabio used to wow the chef Jedi council on Top Chef this week. I quartered four of the new potatoes and simmered them until tender. Then I drained them and tossed them with a couple smashed garlic cloves, a dismembered stick of rosemary, salt, pepper and a little olive oil. That went into a 375 degree oven for a bit over an hour. I turned the potatoes at around 40 minutes so more than one edge would brown well.

The arugula is a variation of a pasta sauce and includes mushrooms and tomato too. I'm out of fresh mushrooms so I used some dried creminis. I briefly sautéed them in a little butter, added the finely chopped tomato and arugula and sautéed for another minute until the arugula wilted. Then I poured in a bit too much cream and added the Gorgonzola and salt, pepper and a little nutmeg. I originally used half the arugula but it wilted quite away while the sauce was cooking down so I threw in the rest. I added a bit more Gorgonzola too while I was at it. When the cheese had melted and the cream reduced enough to form a clingy sauce, it was done.

Pretty simple, but pretty impressive too (although a smaller plate would have displayed it better). I've got to hand it to Fabio's grandmother; these are great potatoes--crispy and chewy on the outside, but with a soft fluffy center and full of flavor. The steak was done perfectly medium rare, if you consider medium rare perfect as right-thinking people do. And the creamed arugula retained a bit of texture against the creaminess of the sauce and the soft tomatoes and mushrooms. All those flavors match nicely and the Gorgonzola is fine with both the steak and potatoes so the sauce did triple duty. Add a spicy dry red wine to cut the fat and you've got a lovely meal.

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

If you carefully kept track of the sub-divisions in my last post, you'll have noticed that I set aside half the dough and didn't touch it again. This stuff doesn't last very long so that meant another hearty pasta dinner last night (kind of a deconstructed carbonara with the egg fried instead of raw). Rolling went much more smoothly this time around as I learned about a problem I hadn't identified the previous attempt: each roller setting can only handle dough very slightly thicker in-coming than out-going. I've kind of got the hang of this now, but with two over-large pasta dinners in a row, I don't want to see another noodle for a while.

So, back to the vegetables. I haven't mentioned the radishes; they and their tops went into another tortilla española early in the week. I got a bit of extra height on it, by cooking it in my new saucier, but that didn't give it real structure and it slumped over during the flip. Next time I'm trying the low heat method suggested in the comments.

The bok choy and spring onion went into a sa cha beef stir fry that I screwed up a little with too much oil and too much corn starch. It was rather unsightly so I'll spare you the image. Those troubles aside, my homemade sa cha dishes really haven't closely resembled the very good versions I've had when eating out (back when I had ready access to quality Chinese restaurants). Either they've got significantly different recipes or sa cha sauce reacts well to the very high heats you can't get in home kitchens. I'll have to do a bit more research to figure out what's going on here.

That leaves the cabbage and turnips which I've been holding on to. The cookbook I was waiting for arrived in my local library branch today so I'll be trying out something from it soon. And, of course, there's one more avocado that's just ripened to usability. I'm still hard-pressed to find uses for them.

On to this week, starting with the arugula (in the plastic bag in the corner). From what it said in the newsletter two weeks ago I figured we'd be getting this last week so I bought a chunk of cheese to make the Florentine dish Tagliatelle con Rucola e Gorgonzola. Rucola is rocket a.k.a. arugula. If I find myself wanting to pull out the pasta machine again, I may still do that. Otherwise I'm thinking of turning it into something similar to creamed spinach and using it as a side-dish to a piece of meat of some sort. It should go well with steak and I've still got a few filets in the freezer.

The chard I'm thinking of using in another version of the garlicky greens tacos I made last month, maybe with shrimp this time. That would also use some of the cilantro I took from the extras bin and, why not?, slices of avocado on top. And/or sliced radish too.

Maybe I'll do a Mexican pickle on the radishes. A quick search didn't turn up a recipe so I suppose it's as simple as Mexican pickled carrots. Oh, speaking of pickles, let's check out the zucchini and eggplant I pickled a couple weeks ago...whoops, wrong jar. Be right back...OK, here we go. Rather more mild than I expected. You can taste a bit of the vegetable through the sweet and sour. The texture of the zucchini is good--a little crisp but softer than a cucumber pickle. The eggplant are spongy, though. On the other hand that means they've absorbed more of the brine so they're more strongly flavored. I like my pickles on the bold side so these are a little disappointing, but they're mild enough to eat straight and I find I'm having difficulty stopping doing so. I'll give them another couple weeks to see what happens.

So, where were we? The potatoes. If I hadn't bought a few big red potatoes last week these wouldn't be enough to worry about, but since I did, I do. Roasted is a possibility, of course. Maybe a chunky potato salad? They're good in chowder too. Eh, they'll keep. I've got enough other meals to worry about.

The avocado will keep too as it won't ripen this week. And honey lasts forever. A few roma tomatoes will get themselves used as will the carambola. I'm in the middle of making ice cream with last week's carambola and I could maybe use a little more. I'll post more about that in a day or two when it's done.

Right, I'm off the library now to pick up that cookbook.

CSA week 10 - Homemade pasta with fresh tomato sauce

Earlier this week La Diva ventured into the realm of homemade pasta with trepidation, difficulty and mixed results. This may have been at my instigation so I feel honor-bound to follow her example and make some pasta myself. This is not only my first time making pasta, I think it'll actually be my first time cooking or eating fresh pasta too.

I started with a cup and a third of flour--half semolina and half white bread flour--a third of a teaspoon of kosher salt and, into the well, cracked two large eggs. I beat the eggs with a fork and gradually mixed in the flour.





Here's where I decided using the fork was getting tricky and switched to bare hands. The dough was still wet, but there was a good bit of flour left so every time it stuck to my hands I'd just roll it in flour and go on kneading it. It only took around five minutes before there was enough gluten formation for it to form a tight ball at which point I let it rest for a half hour.



Meanwhile, I set a big pot of water on the heat and started the sauce. I browned a Tablespoon of butter, added fresh sage and oregano and some chopped pancetta, dipped one of the CSA tomatoes into the boiling water to loosen the peel, peeled and chopped it and added it to the pan along with a spoonful of water to give it a chance to cook down and form a sauce.



Once the dough had rested came the hard part. I cut it in two and attempted to start rolling one half out using my pasta maker. It jammed up just like my earlier attempt at making gyoza wrappers a while back and the result was ragged and uneven. I rolled it back up into a ball, cursed the machine and took out my perfectly good rolling pin to roll out the dough.




I was able to make a good start, but the gluten was too tight to let it roll out to the thinness I was looking for. I did notice that the dough was incidentally getting much better coated in flour than my earlier attempts managed so I figured that may well have been my problem. The dough had gotten too wide so I sliced it in two again and fed half into machine.

I had the rollers set at the widest setting but the dough was too thin for it to get a good grip on it so I had to go down a couple notches. That did it, but it took a few tries before I managed to get it through. This is a process that really requires three hands: one to feed in the dough, one to feed it out and a third to crank the machine. I managed as best I could.

I had better luck with one half than the other. I think just a little bit less flour is causing problems. Also, a bit of metal on the machine is bent out of shape on one side catching the pasta as it comes out the bottom of the rollers so I have to be careful not to get too close to that side.

Long story short, I eventually figured out to keep the dough strip narrow and well-coated in flour and how to feed it in straight. That latter is very important as hitting the sides immediately wads everything up. Next time I'm going to start by cutting the dough into a rectangle to keep everything nice and even.



I managed to get the dough down to roller setting four which was about the thickness of the paperadelli I get dried so I figured that was what I was aiming at. I put on the cutting attachment and made noodles without any further drama.






I brought the water back up to a boil, salted it and added the noodles. I let them cook for just two minutes before taking them out and adding them to the pan of sauce (which had cooked dry and had to be rehydrated a couple times as I struggled with the pasta). I let the noodles cook another couple of minutes in the pan to finish up and absorb the flavors, drizzled some balsamic vinegar, grated on some Parmesan and it was ready to eat.




The cooked pasta is pretty chewy, but I don't think it's undercooked just overthick. They swelled a bit and I forgot to account for that. Next time, at least one notch thinner. As for flavor: they taste like egg noodles. Less distinctly so than dried as they absorbed the flavor of the sauce just as advertised.

That wasn't so hard, considering. And I got enough of a feel for it that next time should go more smoothly. Once I'm comfortable rolling out noodles I'll move on to stuffed pasta but I think that may take a while.

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 nine - Taquitos with guacamole

The guidebooks will tell you: if you go to any taquerilla in San Diego (other than Rubio's Fish Tacos where you want to order the specialty), the thing to get is "three rolled with guac". That is: three rolled tacos--chicken or beef--topped with cheese and guacamole. Today, I made chicken.

Really, this stemmed from having a ripe avocado and tomato, some leftover cilantro and no clever ideas defaulting me down to guacamole. But if I'm going to make guac I may as well put it to good use.

I searched around and found a good-looking recipe here. Now that I've poked through his site a bit, I see he's got a lot of authentic but doable Mexican recipes. I'm going to have to try out some more of those.

I cut the recipe down to a third to use the two chicken thighs I had in the freezer, but otherwise I followed it straight:

"Ingredients: Shredded Chicken

1 1/2 lbs. boneless, skinless chicken breast
2 teas. seasoned salt [I used adobo con sazon which is probably what he meant)
1 teas. pepper
3/4 teas. garlic powder
2 teas. onion powder
2 teas. chili powder
3/4 teas. cumin powder
1/2 teas. oregano
2 dry bay leaves
enough water to cover chicken ( about 2-3 cups )

Ingredients: Taquitos

shredded chicken
15 to 20 6in. corn tortillas
toothpicks
3 to 4 cups vegetable or canola oil for frying

Method: Shredded Chicken Taquitos

Wash chicken thoroughly and place in a medium sized skillet and add just enough water to cover the chicken. Add all ingredients and bring to a boil. Boil for 10 minutes then reduce heat and simmer, covered, for 30 to 40 minutes or until the chicken can be shredded using a wood spatula. If there is any liquid left simply turn up the heat and allow the liquid to evaporate. Let the shredded chicken cool enough to work with.

While the chicken is cooking, add the oil to another medium sized skillet. Only use enough oil to go half way up the side of the pan so when you start frying the oil won’t spill over. Heat oil to 350 degrees and lightly fry the tortillas, on both sides, using a pair of tongs, for about 5 to 10 seconds total. All you are doing here is making them pliable enough to roll, you don’t want them crispy yet, that will come later. Stack the cooked tortillas on a plate and when all of the tortillas are done, flip the whole stack over. this will allow the oil on the tortillas to drip evenly over all of them. Turn off the heat on the oil while you are rolling the taquitos. [I wasn't sure how many tortillas I would need so I prepared eight. I only used five so the rest I chopped into sixths, fried until crisp, sprinkled with salt and lime as they drained and stored in a paper bag for later.

Take about 2 spoonfuls ( about 2 ounces ) [I found a little less than one ounce filled a tortilla to my liking. Skimpy fillings is the San Diego style.] of the chicken and place it in a line across the center of a tortilla and roll it up. Use a toothpick to keep it closed by inserting it at the edge of the tortilla and running it through the center. Continue this process until all of the chicken has been used, you should get somewhere between 15 and 20 taquitos. I like to place them on a piece of foil after rolling them because I don’t have to wash it later but a plate will work fine.

After they are all rolled up you can start to fry them in the 350 degree oil ( turn the heat back on when there are only a few taquitos left to roll ). Fry a few at a time on both sides until golden brown, they will take about 2 minutes a side. Remove to a plate and remove the toothpick. Top with guacamole, shredded lettuce, shredded cheese and tomatoes and a little bit of hot sauce. Toppings are always optional, you can really put anything on them you want, this is just what I put on them." [Cheese usually goes over the guac, but I like mine under so it melts a little. I used half cheddar and half queso fresco. Over the guac I added a little onion, a little tomato and some hot sauce. The guac was a pretty standard recipe; I won't bore you with it.]
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Back at the originating site there's an attached recipe for Mexican rice, but I wasn't feeling up to it. Instead I just put the rice in the rice cooker with the water I simmered the chicken in and some tomato and onion. Not at all bad, really.

I thought it turned out really well. The chicken was a little on the dry side--maybe I should have packed it in more tightly so it would keep out the oil and steam instead of deep fry--but still nicely spiced. All the flavors were there just as they're supposed to be. It's not quite the same as the authentic San Diego rolled tacos; they're not cheap and trashy, it's not 3 a.m. and I'm not drunk so no Ratatouille dolly-zoom flashbacks but still, pretty darn good.