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 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.