Heirloom Tomato and Eggplant Galette

Here's a dinner from last weekend that made us feel super fancy, but surprisingly, came together really easily! Before we started our CSA this season I had never even heard of a galette. And now, two months later, I've made two different kinds: a sweet galette with rhubarb and this smart dinner version full of cheese and vegetables (and butter - oh my word THE BUTTER). And aren't they gorgeous?

Heirloom Tomato and Eggplant Galette on Fork Knife Swoon

Used From Our CSA 
heirloom tomatoes (1 from our box and 1 from the store)
eggplant

Thoughts on the Recipe
- My best advice for working with pastry dough remains some variation of: work quickly and remain calm/confident. A thin metal spatula is a great helper, too. I think our stone counter top must help a lot because it seems to always be a nice cool temperature. But even without that, this was a great dough recipe and was relatively easy to use. I rolled mine out directly on the counter and Steve used parchment paper and we were both successful on the first try!
- Since the price of Gruyere at our grocery store gave me a mild heart attack (about $9 for a tiny wedge that I don't think would have even been enough), I swiftly googled a substitute and landed on Swiss. And we thought it worked out great. Maybe next time with the fancy cheese.
- We split one of these for dinner the night we made them (which basically means we consumed heart-stopping amounts of butter), but the second one lasted us a solid three days as leftovers. And it was delicious reheated. I am such a fan of food that is leftover-friendly.

Sigh ... this is such a beautiful sight to me - is that weird?

So there you have it - a lovely savory galette. Is trying two different recipes of this pastry enough to qualify me as an expert? How about a gal-expert? (Ugh, sorry, that was terrible...)

Week 10 Delivery

Hello Week 10! Here's the list of what we got in our latest CSA box:

Vegetables
ping tung long eggplant (it's so lovely)
all red potatoes (hiding under the beets, in a bag)
green zucchini
gold beets
purple carrots (I pulled one out of its bag for a visual - between the blackberries & tomatoes)
heirloom tomatoes (yellow!)
royal burgundy beans

Fruit
bag of peaches
bag of plums (YES - these are my favorite!)
half-pint of blackberries

Chicken
breasts
boneless/skinless thighs
drumsticks

The items that I've been the most excited about so far this week are the eggplant, plums, and tomatoes. AND, somewhat surprisingly, the carrots as well, thanks to a summery carrot soup recipe I came across online. It's a cold soup, so we cooked it last night, chilled it today, and it's in the plan for dinner tonight. Spoiler alert: purple carrots = purple soup. And I must not forget to mention that there is officially have zucchini coming out of our ears, so we've been eating plenty of that in all forms this week.

Once again, the beets fall on the "meh" end of the spectrum for me. And ... once again, they have not yet made it into our meal plan for Week 10. But Steve did help me at least remember to incorporate some chicken into our meals this week (because believe it or not I had a completed list of meals in hand that once again used no chicken, which I had to go back and revise). So that's something.

I have to say, I spend crazy amounts of time in the kitchen these days. Some days it's exhausting, and on others I am jumping up and down with excitement over what's on the stove top or coming out of the oven. Either way, there's more to come on what we've been up to this week in the land of summer vegetables.

Week 9 Summary

Here is an overview of how our CSA went last week (Week 9):

Agretti: gone! It all went into the yummy lemon-y fettuccine recipe I posted about last week. Loved.

Chinese Purple Garlic: still hanging on to both heads. Thankfully, garlic lasts for ages so it's not going anywhere.

Green Kale: not quite gone, but it's all been used. I was happy to have the chance to repeat the Kale & Quinoa Salad that we tried back in Week 3, and it was great have along for a picnic with friends last Friday night. We're still working through the leftovers.

8-Ball Zucchini: of the six squash we received last week, 2 went into this favorite blueberry zucchini bread recipe. The other four have been worked into our Week 10 meal plan (finished them off last night!), so I'll try to mention how we used them sometime in the coming week. Bottom line: I love zucchini and am working to make up for years of avoiding it as a kid.

Red Cherry Tomatoes: like the zucchini, these have all become a part of our Week 10 meal plan, so more to come on how they got used.

Red Beets: these are sitting untouched in the fridge (sheepish grin) ... Part of the problem is that right now we are consistently getting more produce than we can reasonably consume in a week. When that's the case it is easy to focus on the stuff we're excited about, like kale and blueberries, and ignore the produce that we find daunting. Hence, our beet situation. I'll let you know if anything changes.

Bicolor Sweet Corn: gone! We used two ears last week to make the Zucchini Corn pancakes. The rest has gone into our Week 10 meal plan, so I'll get to that info later in the week.

Peaches: gone! I had one or two by themselves last week. The rest went into the Tomato Peach Salad we made last week, which was perfect: since they weren't in the best shape from the start, we could cut out the rough spots and use what was left in that dish.

Pint of Blueberries: gone! Those that weren't munched by Steve for breakfasts went into the blueberry zucchini bread (link to recipe above).

Jar of Blueberry Jam: we haven't cracked it open yet, but I'm eager to. I think a good loaf of fresh bread needs to be obtained first. 

Chicken Breasts and Whole Leg: I am making my poor husband crazy with our growing chicken problem. At this point in time, our freezer is almost full with various cuts of chicken. And we didn't use any of it this week! It's a meal planning challenge right now: we're getting so much produce and it always feels more urgent to me that we use what we can of that before it goes bad. So when I can write out a week's worth of meals and still not manage to include all the fruits and veggies we got, it feels even less economical to be using chicken in place of some of those other dishes, when it can just stay frozen until we have use for it. If we had a second freezer I wouldn't be worried about this at all. But as it stands, we're working on it.


Week 9 Links
Zucchini Corn Pancakes
Fettuccine with Agretti
Tomato Peach Salad


The CSA stops for no woman, so I'll of course be back tomorrow with our Week 10 delivery list. Onward!

Fettuccine with Agretti & Tomato Peach Salad

Today I have two dishes to share that we made on Wednesday night. Along with some burgundy beans, these two things made for an awesome mid-week dinner (albeit time-intensive).

Our main dish was this lemon fettuccine with agretti. For the most part we do not tend to be big pasta people, but since we had no earthly idea what to do with the agretti or previous context for how to eat it, pasta seemed like a reasonable place to start. And man oh man, what a treat; who knew that lemon and bacon could compliment each other so well? Add in the agretti, and we had the perfect triumvirate of winning at pasta. We ended up dumbing down the recipe quite a bit; and I'll elaborate more on that below. But even with our cheats it was totally worthwhile. 

Lemon Fettuccine with Agretti, Bacon, and Roasted Garlic on Round the Table

On the side we had this tomato, peach & burrata salad. It's basically a fun variation on the caprese salad theme: heirloom tomato, peach, burrata cheese, and a balsamic reduction with some basil. A total win and, in contrast to the pasta, quick and easy to put together. As she says in the recipe, fresh mozzarella can substitute for the burrata if needed. It was more steeply priced, but we decided to spring for it because we were curious. It's basically a cream-infused fresh mozzarella, so ... yeah; we obviously wanted to give that a whirl. And since we only needed half of it, we should be able to repeat this recipe again soon. Woohoo!

Tomato, Peach & Burrata Salad on two peas & their pod 

Used From Our CSA
agretti
peaches
burgundy beans (eaten on the side)

Thoughts on the (Pasta) Recipe
- We had several ingredient substitutions in this: regular fettuccine instead of lemon fettuccine (couldn't even find it at our run-of-the-mill grocery store), raw garlic instead of roasted (didn't want to take the time to roast it ourselves for just two cloves' worth), and Parmesan cheese instead of Romano (because it's what we keep on hand). I'm sure it had the potential to be even more awesome had we used some of those swankier things, but the good news is that it was still great without them.
- I'm not sure if this is always the case, but we realized, once we had served up our finished pasta, that the agretti stems were pretty woody and tough to eat. So we went through it all after the fact to cut the softer leaves from their stems, which clearly would have been much easier before it was all cooked and cheesy. Next time we'll get that right, but still: no real harm done. Once that was taken care of I really enjoyed the taste of this interesting Mediterranean vegetable.


Has anyone else ever cooked with agretti? Did you have to remove the stems? What did you make? Leave your thoughts in the comments!

Zucchini Corn Pancakes

Before finding this recipe last week, I don't think it would have occurred to me to make a non-breakfast pancake. Don't confuse this with the concept of eating a breakfast pancake at a meal other than breakfast (aka: brunch or brinner), which is always a great idea. But now that I've had a savory pancake, I think it's a great idea! These were a great way for us to work through some of the 8-ball zucchini and sweet corn that came in our Week 9 box. Topped with sour cream and some fresh salsa, they were just right.

Zucchini Corn Pancakes on Girl Versus Dough 

Used From Our CSA
8-ball zucchini
bicolor sweet corn

Thoughts on the Recipe
This was really so easy and straightforward. The batter came together really quickly, but cooking it all up was more time-intensive. Steve tends to be the grill cook in our house, or at least the one who is usually standing at the stove when hot oil is involved. And he made several comments about how long the pancakes were taking: at 3-4 minutes per side, it took at least 40 minutes to get through all the batter. Still, we loved these and would certainly make them again, on a night when we know we'll have the time.

Has anyone else ever made a non-breakfast pancake? It was a new concept to me, but maybe I'm just out of the loop!

Week 9 Delivery

Welcome to CSA Week 9! Here are the items we received in our box this week:

Vegetables
agretti
Chinese purple garlic
green kale
8-ball zucchini
red cherry tomatoes
red beets
bicolor sweet corn 

Fruit
bag of peaches
pint of blueberries
jar blueberry jam

Chicken
breasts
whole leg

Agretti is a totally new-to-us item, and after reading a bit about it (some info here), I realized that it's kind of a unique and rare vegetable in the U.S., with a brief window of availability - quite a treat to get some in our box! We've already used it up and I'll share more about what we made in the next few days, but just know for now that it rocked. The Chinese purple garlic is also something I've never seen before, but I'm planning on using it like regular garlic. Somebody stop me if it's some wacky variation and I shouldn't do that, but it feels like a safe bet.

Otherwise, I'm happy to have some more kale this week (planning to repeat a favorite salad recipe) and love that we are flush with zucchini. Also, sweet corn! Oh, and more beets - ha. I'm still not sure what's going to become of those this time around. Overall I'm pretty happy with the way Week 9 has been shaping up thus far and I'll be back with some details soon!

Week 8 Summary

Week 8 of our CSA is now behind us. Here's an overview of how we used (or didn't use) the items we received:

Royal Burgundy Beans: the cool thing I learned about burgundy beans last week is that they lose their dark purple color and turn green when they are done cooking! How neat (and totally practical) is that? Unfortunately though, we still have almost a whole bag of these left.  I made one small helping of them while Steve was away, but hopefully we'll make some more with dinner tonight.

Dill: so if you're not pickling en masse, what's the best way to use up a whole bunch of dill? On Friday I roasted two chicken legs in a pan of the new red potatoes and carrots, and then coated the cooked veggies in lemon juice and dill for some flavor. The recipe called for a whopping 2 tsp. of minced dill, which didn't even make a dent in the bundle we got. Any suggestions?

8-Ball Zucchini: I only used one of these squash last week to make the zucchini tomato gratin, so we are still swimming in them (especially because we got about 6 more in our Week 9 box!). That's okay though because I still have plans for them, and I seriously love zucchini.

New Red Potatoes: gone! They all went into the roast veggies/chicken legs dish mentioned above and pictured below, a variation on this recipe. The whole thing turned out okay. Not bad, but a little dry, which can most likely be blamed on my incompetence with taking a recipe rogue.

Chioggia Beets: gone! All went into the chocolate beet cake I wrote about last week.

Red Leaf Lettuce: gone! Mid-week I thawed a chicken breast from one of our previous CSA weeks, and poached and cubed it so it could go into a green salad for lunches while Steve was away (since not cooking dinner every night = no leftovers to eat for lunch the next day). So good. My favorite right now is dried cranberries, blue cheese crumbles, and a vinaigrette or Vadalia onion dressing. Oh, and cashews (!), but we didn't have any on hand.

Green Cabbage: we used about half of it and I'm sorry to say I don't think the rest is going to get used. This is the recipe I tried and it was not love, at all. I have total vegetable-guilt.

White Onions: haven't used any of them yet, but thankfully they'll hold up for a long long time.

Peaches: gone! All eaten with lunches.

2 Pints Blueberries: so far we've used about half of them. I made this yummy blueberry cheesecake ice-cream as a welcome home treat for Steve (but also secretly as a treat for myself!). We half this recipe to 8 servings when we make it.

 

Chicken Breasts: gone! Both went into this barbecue pulled chicken crock-pot dish that we love. Steve tweaks the ingredients some (less molasses, more vinegar) to get more bite in the sauce and it's great.

Wings: not used yet; still frozen.


Week 8 Links
Chocolate Beet Cake
Zucchini Tomato Gratin


Week 9 is up next. Stay tuned to see how it goes!

Zucchini Tomato Gratin

Like I explained the other day, my goal this week was to try and be a good kid while Steve was away (he'll be home tonight - yayyyy!) and cook at least a few dinners and lunches for myself. A noble endeavor, when my alternative may have been relying on Lean Cuisines and/or take-out for 5 days/10 meals - ick. Especially on a weeknight cooking a meal for myself, by myself, isn't high on the list of things I'd love to be doing, so that made this zucchini tomato gratin dish a great fit because it was super quick and easy.

My only problem with this recipe is that it wasn't really a recipe - more of a "throw in some of this, and this, and maybe this too, and then 'bake' it". Not that that's a bad thing at all, but it makes my poor little diligent-recipe-following, culinarily uncreative, Type-A head explode a little bit. How much zucchini? How much cheese? How long should I set my timer for!? Gaahhh, what if I MESS IT UP!!?

Intuition in the kitchen (ha, rhyming) is way more in Steve's realm, so if he had been around he could have reigned me in a bit. But in any case, the worst thing that ended up happening was that the ratio of vegetables to cheese & breadcrumbs was way low. Like, embarrassingly low, if you compare her gratin pictures to mine. But hey, thanks in part to all that cheese and breadcrumb action: IT TASTED GREAT.

Zucchini Tomato Gratin on Proud Italian Cook

Used From Our CSA8-ball zucchini

I also could have used the white onions that came in our Week 8 box, but I so love Vadalia onions, therefore I didn't want to sub those out. And of course we are getting cherry tomatoes next week (go figure), but this time around they had to come from the store.

Thoughts on the Recipe
- Since we don't have any oven-safe skillets at home, I used a medium-size Pyrex dish for this, which worked fine.
- I just used the various cheeses and breadcrumbs that we had on hand, which didn't match her recommendations, but thankfully for me this kind of meal is very forgiving, as I learned.
- I would definitely make this again, and next time I won't be so nervous about getting it wrong. I would also up the vegetable factor for sure, to stretch it a bit farther, because it makes great leftovers.

Chocolate Beet Cake

As I mentioned yesterday, I was (and still am) daunted by the beets and the cabbage that we got in our Week 8 box. I did get some really great suggestions on facebook though for how to make use of both - yay and thank you! So somehow I feel like I cheated a little, but when I was scrolling Pinterest for recipe ideas and saw one for a chocolate beet cake, I repinned it right away and didn't look any further for ideas. And I think I was so relieved to see the word "cake" that it also didn't occur to me to browse around for other cake or dessert ideas that used beets. Now I know that there are a lot out there, and some variations that look really good! So all that to say that I can't vouch for this recipe in particular; I literally tried the first one I found.

My mom always says that beets taste like dirt, and I think I agree with her. I haven't yet written them off entirely, but I have to say that I even found the process of boiling, peeling and dicing these guys to prepare them for the batter to be pretty distasteful. They boiled for 20 minutes and by the end of it, the whole kitchen smelled like the ground! The aroma during baking was much nicer, once the chocolate was in the mix too, but by then I wasn't expecting much. My first few tastes put me on the fence, but this cake has really grown on me throughout the week. I would say it does have a bit of an earthy flavor to it somewhere in there, but it works.

Chocolate Beet Cake on Gourmet Heartbeat 

Used From Our CSA
chioggia beets

Thoughts on the Recipe
- I was short on beets, and had only one and a half of the two cups the recipe calls for. It worked out okay, obviously, and probably gave me less of that earthiness I mentioned above. I added a little extra applesauce to help make up the volume.
- The recipe recommends a bundt pan for this cake, which would have been very cute, but we don't own one. Instead I divided the batter in two and used my loaf pan twice. I guess I could have also halved the recipe, but then I wouldn't have been able to use up all the beets! I watched it closely, but the baking time ended up being about the same.
- Yes to chocolate chips! I love the texture they give to a chocolate cake. I was generous with them.

So now I can say I've baked with beets. We are slotted to get some more in Week 9, so let's see if I get brave and actually try a savory dish next time, or if I just stick to putting beets in baked goods from here on out.

Week 8 Delivery

Welcome to CSA Week 8! Here are the items we received in our box last Thursday:

Vegetables
royal burgundy beans (bag, semi-hidden next to the dill)
dill
8-ball zucchini (they are round! so cute)
new red potatoes
chioggia beets
red leaf lettuce
green cabbage
white onions

Fruit
peaches
2 pints blueberries

Chicken
breasts
wings

Week 8 presents itself with three interesting challenges. The first challenge is that Steve is away Monday through Friday of this week, leading a sleep-away camp for work. Typically, if he's working late or doing an overnight for work, I won't cook dinner, but instead will scrounge around for leftovers or treat myself to something like Chipotle. It provides a nice excuse to get out of the kitchen (and do something super productive instead, like watch Netflix). But for five days in a row, that's not going to fly. I did kind of front-load our meal plan so I was able to hoard some leftovers by the end of the weekend, but I'll still be cooking for myself at least a couple of times this week.

Challenges number two and three are the cabbage and beets, which are both filed under the "don't love" heading for Steve and I. I've already made use of the beets, and will share this week what we made and how it went (we may have cheated...?). I also tried a recipe on Sunday night that used about half the cabbage, and IMO it was not good. Steve called it "edible", and I don't think that response qualifies it as a success. But I am excited about all of our other Week 8 items and have some fun plans this week!

I'd love your ideas for preparing beets and cabbage in the comments!

Week 5 Summary

So our vacation to Alaska came and went, and we had a fabulous time. What a great break from the normal pace of life! Needless to say, the Week 5 entries I had planned to write and post while we were away were pretty far from my mind most of the time, and I just decided to let them go, and live up the vacation lifestyle while I could. Also, the cost of internet on the ship was $0.79/minute, so do that math. Yeesh.

We are already cooking and eating our way through Week 8 (Weeks 6 & 7 went to friends while we were away), but before I jump into it I thought I'd jot down a quick recap of how the week before our trip went, since we ate some really good and interesting stuff. So here it is: my overview of Week 5.

Garlic Scapes: gone! We tried a second garlic scape pesto recipe, and it actually had basil in it too, so it wasn't as strong of a garlicky flavor as the recipe we used during Week 3. It was great. The ricotta on top of the pasta was a nice addition as well.

French Breakfast Radishes: gone! We repeated the Tortellini and Spring Vegetable Salad from Week 1, but with the majority of the radishes, we tried this butter-braised radish recipe. They were not bad, but I think I liked them more than Steve did. Our friends joined us for dinner the night we made them, and their daughter absolutely LOVED them. She kept saying "radishes....radishes..." in this swoon-y lovestruck voice while she munched them. The best.

Green Romaine Lettuce: gone! We made chicken Caesar salad wraps the day before leaving on vacation, a long-time favorite recipe of ours. There may have been a few lunch salads in the mix too during the week.

Snow Peas: these are still sitting, 95% unused, in our crisper drawer. They look okay, but after three weeks I'm not sure what kind of shape they are really in. My main problem is that I just don't love snow peas - what do you like to do with them?

Purple Kohlrabi: of the three kohlrabi bulbs (bulbs? heads?) we had, two went into this kohlrabi carrot fritters recipe (the third one, sadly, went unused). They were enjoyable with some Old Bay chicken legs one night for dinner. I especially liked the avocado cream sauce that went with them and ate the rest it for lunch the next day with some baby carrots.

Asparagus: gone! Some of it was used in the tortellini spring vegetable salad and the rest was roasted on another night for dinner. It was such a good batch, but I bet that's the last asparagus we'll see this season - until next year, my beloved green shoots!

Strawberries: gone! I made this recipe for strawberry rhubarb sorbet mid-week. It was pretty tasty, but really confirmed my true identity as an ice-cream girl at heart. (In other words, next time I will just make strawberry rhubarb ice-cream, ha!) I liked it with chocolate chips as well as plain.

Rhubarb: gone! It was all used in the sorbet (along with a few extra stalks from the grocery store to supplement for what I needed).

Whole Chicken: it hasn't been used yet, but it's in our freezer and not going anywhere. 


Also, I wanted to mention that I did take a couple of hours during Week 5 to blanch and freeze the broccoli that we had leftover from Week 4. I pretty explicitly followed the instructions that I found here and even though I haven't tasted them yet (obviously), the process went really smoothly. Now I can look forward to using them this fall in a soup or other warm & cozy dish. And it feels great to know that it did not go to waste, when it otherwise would have.

So that's week 5. Believe it or not, we still have over 20 weeks left in our CSA! More to come, of course.