Week 3 Summary

Here is an overview of how things ended up for Week 3:

Rhubarb: gone! About half of it went into the galette (along with what remained from Week 2). I made another dessert over the weekend that used up most of the rest of it, along with some strawberries that came in our Week 4 box. I'll share that dish as part of Week 4.

Yellow Chard: gone! It all went into this gratin recipe - I halved it. Very tasty (how could it not be after being cooked with milk, butter, and cheese?).

Salanova Lettuce: about half the head is left - this has been great in lunch salads, which I ate pretty much every day this week. I think we'll finish it yet or come close; it's holding up pretty well.

Scallions: between the stock, kale salad, and other random stuff, I think we worked our way through most of them.

Garlic Scapes: gone! One or two went into Steve's stock, and I made the rest into pesto (using the recipe on this site, and I also tossed in a small handful of pine nuts). This was really fun, since we had never cooked with or even heard of scapes before. The pesto has a pretty good, garlic-y bite to it, so the pasta was pretty strong and just okay IMO. On pizza however: SO GOOD. We still have a bunch left in the freezer, and scape peso pizza is on the menu again tonight - yay.

Green Kale: gone! All went into making the kale & quinoa salad.

Red Leaf Lettuce: gone! All used up in side salads throughout the week.

Strawberries: gone! I used several in lunch salads, and Steve made a mini-clafloutis with the rest last Friday (which was apparently Julia Childs' favorite dessert - he got the recipe at a cooking class several months ago).

Whole Heritage Chicken: gone! Roasted for dinner and then used to make a basic stock.

strawberry clafloutis made by Steve

Week 3 Links
Rhubarb Galette
Butter-Roasted Chicken and Stock
Kale & Quinoa Salad

chard gratin and noodles with garlic scape pesto

So that's Week 3 in a nutshell! We're currently in the middle of Week 4 - and have a LOT of veggies to work our way through. My next post will be an overview of what came in this week's box.

Kale & Quinoa Salad

The first time we ever tried a recipe with quinoa in it (to make these tacos, which I highly recommend, btw) Steve came home from that week's grocery store run and said that there were a lot of different flavors of "kwin-o-ah" (emphasis on the "o") and he wasn't quite sure which one he should get. I honestly had no clue what he was saying at first, which quickly became hilarious and adorable when I realized he was talking about quinoa. And that's my funny, if not anti-climactic, story about quinoa. In Steve's defense, I will never run the risk of misspelling it since I say "kwin-o-ah" to myself just about every time I write it out. Thanks, man.

Last night we tried another kale salad recipe. And despite the common denominators of kale and chickpeas, this one is really pretty different from the chopped kale salad we tried during CSA Week 1, which is exciting. Yay for variety! And like the first kale salad, this too was delicious.

Kale & Quinoa Salad on enjoy it

Used From Our CSA
kale
scallions (in place of red onion)

Thoughts on the Recipe
- We halved this, because I did think we would have enough kale for the full version. But as I washed and chopped it, I did start to feel like it was a lot more than I initially guessed we had. So I made the full amount of dressing just to make sure we wouldn't wind up short on that. We had a little dressing leftover in the end, which will be great on any green salad later this week. In fact I would definitely make just the dressing again to have on hand on it's own - simple but it works!
- I saw the note in the instructions to add the dressing early on (to help wilt the kale) a little late in the process of getting everything ready. It's good advice and next time I'll definitely do that first, before cooking the quinoa or chopping the onion. 
- The leftovers today were great. If you plan on having any, I'd just recommend leaving the cashews out and adding them in as you eat it. Cashews get all weird and rubbery after sitting in a dressed salad for a while. Anyone else experienced this?

So there you have it: a delicious kale & quinoa salad. Let me know your thoughts if you get the chance to try it out! I'll post again soon with a Week 3 recap, and some links to other recipes we used this week that I didn't write about in detail.

Butter-Roasted Chicken and Stock

So it's been pretty quiet around these parts this week, huh? I guess I fell off the blogging wagon. But here I am, clambering back on. With or without a post to share, things are chugging right along in the kitchen and in our bellies.

Last Sunday we roasted our first whole chicken, and Steve had the idea to try our hand at a basic chicken stock with the carcass. Both were a relative success, I think. The only downside is that we barely set foot outside of the kitchen all afternoon/evening, but to be fair, I also decided to make some homemade mint chocolate chip ice cream with the leftover mint leaves that we bought for the chicken. You might be thinking: "Woah, overkill." but in that case you probably have never tasted ice cream made with real mint, because it melted all that hard work away with one bite. Well, almost.

Four cups of chicken stock, now hanging out in our freezer.

Butter-Roasted Chicken with Cilantro and Mint on Food & Wine

Used From Our CSA
whole heritage chicken

I had a pretty personal encounter rubbing our bird down with the flavored butter. First time for everything!

Thoughts on the Recipe
Really this was pretty straightforward. Of course we halved the recipe since we were only working with one bird. The flavor was great, really unique, and even more pronounced in the next few days (I wonder if our stock will take any of that on). We ate it for dinner with a green salad on the side. Very satisfying and made for some great leftovers.

The only thing I am coming to loathe about all these non-breast chicken parts we've been working with is the crazy amounts of splatter in our oven, and the resulting smoke-filled kitchen and fire alarms that go off every 90 seconds. I think I am going to try tenting the pan with foil next time we make legs, wings, or a whole chicken in the oven. Do you guys have any other suggestions?

After dinner Steve started work on Phase II of the marathon chicken-cooking day, a basic stock recipe. It felt like a pretty low-risk, marginal-reward experiment, so why the heck not give it a try?

The Gateway Stock on the paupered chef

Used from Our CSA
chicken carcass, uncooked wing-tips, neck, etc. (everything that came with it, minus the liver)
scallions

Thoughts on the Recipe
- In addition to the scallions, Steve also threw in a bunch of other non-CSA stuff that we already had on hand, loosely following the guidelines of the recipe: more onion, bay leaves, ginger, and cilantro (we did just get cilantro in yesterday's box, though, so go figure).
- I totally agree with the one commenter on the recipe site who submitted that it's ridiculous to go out and buy new produce just to make it into a stock - in that case isn't it easier to just buy a can of stock? But there was a great follow-up comment from someone who accumulates their veggie scraps in a bag in the freezer and uses them when the time comes to make a stock, and I think that is so smart.
- I think our finished liquid went straight into the freezer, so we may have missed the "let it refrigerate for a day" step, to let the flavors meld. Ooops - next time.
- As he says in his recipe, this may not make the most highly refined stock, but it will suit great in a lot of the one pot dishes that Steve and I tend to gravitate towards.

In the end we got four cups of stock out of this experiment, which equates to two cans from the store. I'll take it. Have you ever made a stock from scratch before? If so, I'd love to hear your tips and tricks in the comments!

Rhubarb Galette

Yep, I'm back with more rhubarb!

This galette (like a pie without a pan - it's French and therefore classy) was pretty delicious, and almost entirely consumed within about 3 hours of it's conception (thank you, girls' night). I have to say, Martha really knows her stuff. The cornmeal in the crust did me in and gave it a great rustic texture. It took some time, but wasn't too work intensive. If you think of this as apple pie's springy counterpart, and you love a homemade crust like I do, it took far less effort overall. 

Rhubarb Galette on martha stewart

Used From Our CSA
rhubarb (a little from both Weeks 2 and 3)

Thoughts on the Recipe
- Making the dough a day early could help break up the work and clean-up for this recipe
- If you're smarter than me, you'll use a rimmed baking sheet. My crust had one tiny little hole in it (see above), so the juices ran everywhere (luckily I saw what was happening, so I constructed a little aluminum foil trough to put on the lower rack before the puddle went overboard).
- I get a little better & more consistent every time I make a crust. I use a lot of flour to prevent sticking. I honestly think that pie/pastry crust can sense fear. So my best advice is to remain confident and calm, but try to work quickly. Once I start to fall apart, so does the crust. Seriously. I rolled it out right on the counter top, and then sort of scraped and folded it over bit by bit onto the parchment paper, until it was upside-down and completely on the paper in one piece.
- If you have the time (I did not), let it cool completely before transferring it onto a platter, or heck: just eat it hot. Steve & I tried the 3-spatula teamwork approach to move it over, and it completely broke apart. I was pretty ticked, but he did a good job of discreetly piecing it back together while I stood there and said bad words.

Things that make my heart happy, right here.

Two rhubarb recipes under my belt now! I wonder if we'll get any more this season, or if it has run its course? Either way, our fruit share officially starts this Thursday, which I am super pumped for. Rhubarb or no, there are more weekend desserts in our future!

Week 3 Delivery

Here are the items we received in our Week 3 delivery on Thursday:

This box is crazy-full, especially when you look at last week's delivery.

Vegetables
frisee swapped for more rhubarb - yay!
yellow chard
salanova lettuce (that cute round head of lettuce in the middle)
scallions
garlic scapes (the curly shoots at the bottom)
green kale
red leaf lettuce
strawberries (clearly not a vegetable - but we are NOT complaining!)

Chicken
1 whole heritage chicken


It's a good thing that by the time I usually write these delivery posts, we already have a meal plan in place for the coming week. It lets me post with a note of excitement, since the momentary panic of "Omigosh, what are we going to make with all this?!" is already behind me.

I'm looking forward to another week of trying new things: roasting a whole chicken for the first time ever (in an herb butter that I think is going to be awesome!), eating garlic scapes (which I previously didn't even know were a thing; the plan right now is pesto), and a new kale salad recipe to add to the arsenal. More to come after the weekend!