Starvacious

We got our first delivery from our CSA today. Included in the haul were:

• beets
• radishes
• beet and radish greens
• red Russian kale
• garlic scapes
• arugula
• spinach
• cilantro

With these ingredients, and given the rainy, blustery-for-June forecast for the next couple of days, here’s what’s cooking this week:

• cilantro pesto – I went a little afield on this one, adding some garlic scapes because we didn’t have enough cilantro. It will probably go on sandwiches with some of the insanely delicious herb roasted turkey from Seward Co-op. I might even throw some thinly sliced radishes into MY sandwich, for crunch.
• roasted beet salad with arugula, wheat berries and feta – I will add the spinach into this salad. We split our share with some friends, so we often wind up with smaller quantities of a lot of things. Arugula and beets are friends, beets and feta are friends. This should be tasty!
• garlic and cashew noodle salad – I picked up some extra baby bok choy for this bad boy. Bok choy = fun to say!

• kale and sausage soup – no link for this one, because it’s a staple so it lives and constantly evolves in my head. This is how it will go down this week:
  1. Brown some of Seward’s kick-ass italian sausage and set aside, leaving oil in pan.
  2. Caramelize some onions in the leftover sausage oil. Maybe throw in some leftover green garlic.
  3. Add thinly sliced yellow potatoes.
  4. Add water or chicken stock to cover. Let simmer until potatoes are half-tender.
  5. Add white beans (I have some left from earlier in the week, but canned will also do).
  6. Chop kale and beet and radish greens and add to pot.
  7. Add salt, pepper, and red pepper to taste, and simmer until you feel good about it.

Last summer, Ian and I had an addiction. It led to many trips home from the co-op with very heavily loaded bicycles, and many trips out to the recycling bin with bags full of cans.

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The last few years, our farm share has regularly included a nice portion of sungold tomatoes during tomato season.

Since we, especially Ian, like sungolds a LOT, we snapped up a couple of seedlings when our CSA farm offered CSA members the opportunity to buy some. The seedlings arrived last week, and we’ve been handling them regularly, moving them inside and outside pretty regularly while hardening them off.

One of my favorite things about sungolds is their distinctive aroma. It has never really reminded me of anything in particular, I just like how they smell.If someone made a rosemary/sungold perfume, I’d be all over that. Or, rather, since it’s perfume, it would be all over me.

I noticed that the foliage of our sungold seedlings has that distinctive smell, which they left on my hands when I was moving them. I got curious about whether anybody else had anything to say about it and did some googling.

Apparently, some people think sungolds smell like marijuana. Which is not really my take on the matter, but it does crack me up!

• This Anasazi Bean Burger is my go-to bean burger. I found the recipe back when we lived closer to the Wedge and shopped there, and they had Anasazi beans in the bulk section. These days, I usually make it with Rancho Gordo Vaquero beans. Which may or may not be because I like to say “vaquero.” I’ll never tell.
• This Chocolate Sorbet from Vanilla Garlic is outstanding. Super easy to make, super tasty, makes a dangerously large amount, and, as promised, doesn’t get all grainy in the fridge. Seems like it could easily be  vegan/lactose-free, depending on the composition of the chocolate used.
• We have a pretty consistent supply of local arugula and salad greens at the co-op these days, so I am trying to take advantage of that while waiting as patiently as I can for the growing season to gear up. So I made this Turkey Sausage & Arugula with Whole Wheat Pasta. Tomatoes are several months off, so I used some sun-dried tomatoes I had on hand. And Seward Coop usually has chicken, rather than turkey, sausage, so I used that. Easy and tasty. And adaptable to circumstances on the ground!

• This Kale and Ricotta Salata Salad (from Kim Severson) looks delicious and simple. It calls for lacinato/Tuscan/dinosaur kale/cavalo nero/black kale. Why does this kind of kale have so many names? Probably because it’s so awesome. My favorite name is dinosaur kale, because it makes me think it was so named because the leaves look like dinosaur tongues (something I completely made up, but which profoundly appeals to my inner 7-year old).
• Pasta with Edamame Pesto (from The Kitchn) would make an delicious, speedy weeknight dinner.
• Our sunny, warm and clear spring weather has taken a hiatus to allow some rain, so I totally want these Hoisin Pork Wraps with Peanut Slaw (from the Kitchn) to get in my belly.
• The St. Paul Farmer’s market opened this weekend. I am totally going to wuss out because it’s raining (maybe next weekend?), but reports are that everything is about 2 weeks ahead of a typical schedule because it’s been so sunny and warm this spring, so there may already be asparagus. So, I’ll be closer to making this Warm Asparagus Salad with Basil & Mint Pistou (from Sprouted Kitchen) than I ever would be in a normal spring.
• I love rutabaga, because it’s fun to say, delicious, and available from local sources well into the winter. I love celeriac for similar reasons, and also because it’s less stringy than celery. I only learned of my love for scallops when I attended a wedding catered by Sea Change last year; they served scallops in several presentations, each of which more delicious than the last. In the short term, I ate approximately my body weight in scallops. In the long term, I always want scallops, even if I rarely actually purchase or eat them. Long story short, this Rutabaga and Celeraic puree with Seared Scallops (from the Kitchn)? Right up my alley.
• Vegan Vanilla Coconut Ice Cream (from the Kitchn) seems like a pretty good option, especially given the number of my friends who have dairy issues.

Last spring, I had to feed about 60 rugby players after a game on a limited budget. I made pulled chicken, pulled pork, a delightful Champagne Vinegar Red Potato Salad (which I don’t make often because I love it, but Ian doesn’t), which were all pretty good and which disappeared as if by magic.

I also made some recipes that I now want to make over and over again.

The Smashed Chickpea Salad from Smitten Kitchen? Delicious, simple, healthy, and I want it right now. At least some of my Rancho Gordo chickpeas have acquired a very specific destiny.

Also delicious? The Peanut Butter Cookie recipe from 101 Cookbooks. These are doubly dangerously delicious because you can eat the dough raw without any concerns (no eggs, not that I usually let that stop me) and, once cooked, the cookies are also awesome.

A recipe I haven’t made, but want to, is this Garlic and Cashew Noodle Salad from Bitchin Camaro. Something about the Asian flavor profile just sounds so yummy during the early spring.

My brain is getting into spring mode, even if the produce section isn’t quite ready to catch up with me yet. My theme this week is apparently, as soon as I see [insert vegetable] then I will make [insert recipe].

• This Pistachio Asparagus Pesto on Linguine from Serious Eats uses spinach and asparagus instead of basil and pistachios instead of pine nuts. And I can’t wait for asparagus season to start so I can make it.
• I saw blood oranges at the coop last week, and wanted something to make with them. This Warm Rice Salad with Chard, Feta, Walnuts and Blood Orange from Yummy Supper might just fit the bill.
• I see signs of a chard phase on the horizon, because this Peppery Whole Wheat Pasta with Wilted Chard from the Kitchn also sounded delicious to me. And it’s a good excuse to try a new soft creamy cheese to incorporate into the sauce.
• I am totally making this Kale, Carrot and Walnut salad from Vampire Gran once we start seeing more kale.
• We get lots of celeriac from our CSA, and I use it almost all winter in lieu of celery with onions and carrots as the foundation for recipes starring other ingredients. But I look forward to making the humble, cthulu-looking celeraic the star of the show, as in this Celery Root Remoulade from David Leibovitz.
• These Garlic and Sun Dried Tomato Corn Muffins from Eat, Drink, Pretty look like a great side to the zucchini-riffic soup I’ll start making once we start getting a majillion zucchini from our CSA in a few months.

Man, I love carrot cake. It would take approximately zero effort to convince me to go to Birchwood Cafe on any given day to see if they happen to have any of their delicious carrot cake available. It’s exactly the kind I like – carroty with cream cheese frosting.

In my carrot cake world view, walnuts are acceptable. Extraneous things like pineapple and coconut ruin the experience for me.

I can see the path of my obsession in the carrot cake, carrot cake-inspired, and marginally carrot cake-related (i.e., dessert recipes that include carrots without actually striving to be anything like actual carrot cake) recipes I’ve flagged over the last year.

Actual Carrot Cakes

• Sigrid’s Carrot Cake (from the Pioneer Woman) – Very straightforward. I wish I had some right now.
• Carrot Cake Recipe (from 101 Cookbooks) – This recipe uses dates and bananas as a sweetener, which is intriguing and which may  not violate my “no extraneous crap in carrot cake” rule because they are smushed up enough to be unobtrusive.I actually don’t like eating bananas AT ALL, although I don’t mind bananas in banana bread. I can’t actually explain this. It’s especially weird because I was a competitive-level rugby player for many years, and that is demographic that typically eats a lot of bananas. Bananas are a pretty good recovery food because they are transportable and have a lot of potassium, helping avoid the cramping low potassium can cause.

  Fortunately, lots of foods have potassium, so the world won’t experience an epidemic of cramping when Cavendish, the main variety of bananas we eat today, succumb to Panama Disease. Check out Banana: the Fate of the Fruit that Changed the World by Dan Koeppel for more info on this and other banana-related topics. It’s a pretty fascinating book.

Doing it up Raw Style

• Raw Carrot Cake (from Two Blue Lemons) – I have actually made this recipe. It wasn’t bad. I had the same problem with this that I have with a lot of things that aren’t exactly the thing they are trying to replace, which is that it mostly just left me wanting the real thing. But considering this recipe as it’s own thing, I found it made a pretty decent, inarguably nutritious, afternoon snack.

Cupcakes: I love you regardless of whether you are currently in style

• Carrot Cake Cupcakes (from Simply Recipes) – These look to be classic (super basic cream cheese frosting, I cannot resist you) but have an intriguing twist (cinnamon, cardamon, and orange zest).
• Carrot Cake Cupcakes with Vanilla Mascarpone Frosting (from Picky Cook) – To sum it up, Mascarpone.

And so much more

• Carrot Cakey Cookies (from the Kitchn) – These actually look reasonably nutritious, what with the whole wheat flour, wheat bran, oatmeal, and a Greek yogurt-based filling. I’m totally skipping the raisins, though.
• Carrot Cake Ice Cream (from David Leibovitz in the LA Times)
• Carrot Oatmeal Cookies (from 101 Cookbooks) – Not like carrot cake except that they contain carrots. But these are really yummy (raw or cooked) and vegan cookie.

You know what’s not bad?

Puttanesca sauce on polenta instead of pasta. Sometimes, cornmeal is a nice break from wheat-based starches.

In my puttanesca experiments over the last few weeks, I’ve learned that I prefer the recipe from Serious Eats to the one from Bitty. And that I like it even better if I am not shy with the olives and capers.

We had some people over last weekend to sample our first three home brews, and I got characteristically overexcited about cooking a bunch of appetizers for our friends to snack on. Amazingly, every recipe turned out smashingly, thereby exceeding my expectations by a lot.

The poor suckers who arrived late didn’t get much of a chance to eat pretzel bites (from the Kitchn, using a pretzel recipe from Smitten Kitchen, adapted from Martha Stewart. That’s a lot of genealogy for some pretzels). These were amazingly easy to make (make dough. Let it rise. Roll out and cut into bite size pieces. Boil. Bake.) and super delicious with the Sierra Nevada Stout and Stoneground mustard we happened to have handy. They also disappeared in the blink of an eye.

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