Spinach pizza; turnip spice cake

Hi everyone,

I see Patricia posted this link in the newsletter, so if you're just checking us out for the first time, welcome! We've set ourselves the project of blogging for a year about how we use up the Taproot CSA box. We don't always mention everything - apples and carrots tend to go in lunches, so I don't really write about them - but we'll try to let you know how we use up most of the box ingredients. We include recipes the first time we write about something, but we do have some stand-bys we cook often, so we won't repeat those recipes. You can search previous entries by ingredient. The hope is that it'll give people some ideas about how to use unfamiliar vegetables - or overly familiar ones! We'd love to hear what you're doing with your box in the comments.

Thursday I made an 'old standby' - German skillet of sausages, sauerkraut and potatoes. I added in some purple cabbage and while it makes the potatoes look a little odd (they turn blotchy purple) it tastes good.

Friday I made spinach pizza, inspired by a pizza I used to love at Porterhouse North in Dublin. It also had portabella mushrooms, which I didn't have yesterday, and is really good with a handful of arugula dropped on top after it comes out of the oven (which I also didn't have). But our version was tasty nonetheless. Brush a whole wheat pizza base with olive oil. Crush a clove of garlic and spread it over the base (or if you prefer less garlic, cut a clove in half and rub the halves on the base). Spread washed (uncooked) spinach over the base. Dot with kalamata olives and generous amounts of blue cheese. Cook until base is crispy and cheese is melted.

Today I was going to make turnip spice cake, but when I cut the turnip into cubes and steamed it, Ria ate most of it. For breakfast. I swear she would choose turnip over candy. Weird child! But I'll include the recipe here anyways, since I promised it last time.

Turnip Spice Cake

2 ½ cups whole wheat flour

¼ tsp salt

2 tsp cinnamon

1 tsp nutmeg

¼ tsp cloves

½ cup butter

1 cup brown sugar

1 cup soured milk (if you don’t have sour milk, combine 1 T lemon juice and 1 cup milk, and let it sit for 5 minutes)

2 tsp baking soda

1 ½ cups cold mashed turnip

1 ½ cups raisins

Preheat oven to 350 F. Combine flour, salt and spices. Cream butter and sugar. Stir the baking soda into the soured milk; add to sugar mixture. Mix in the turnip and raisins. Combine with the dry ingredients. Bake in a 13 x 9 pan for 40 minutes.

Right now I'm boiling beets, and will make roasted beets for supper, I think. Kenneth won't like them but his folks are coming over, so they and Ria can eat most of them. The recipe is from a vegetarian cookbook called Paradiso Seasons (a fantastic cookbook)

20 small beets (I have more than that)

olive oil

salt

1 T balsamic vinegar

1 tsp caraway

1 onion, thinly sliced

Boil beets then lift them out to a bowl of cold water. Rub the skins off. Put the beets in an oven dish and toss with olive oil and salt. Cook 375 F for 15 minutes. Sprinkle on balsamic vinegar and caraway seeds and cook another five minutes.

I'll let you know how they taste!

-Kathy

root vegetable chips; parsnip and carrot latkes; beet conserve; sweet potatoes and apples

Friday - and the stove actually worked tonight! Must be because I had the day off. We had seafood chowder (yum - one of the best things about moving to Nova Scotia!) and I made parsnip and carrot latkes or pancakes. These came out of the Eat Feed Autumn Winter cookbook, and were lovely. You grate up carrots and parsnips (about 4-5 of each) and squeeze out some of the moisture. In a separate bowl, mix up two eggs, 6 T flour, 2 T ground ginger, 1 T honey and a bit of salt. Stir in the grated veggies, then cook spoonful-sized pancakes in a pan with enough oil to cover the bottom. (Drop in a piece of grated carrot and when it sizzles and bubbles the oil is hot enough.)

They were really good. The cookbook said to serve with creme fraiche or yoghurt, but we didn't have any, so Kenneth suggested Thai dipping sauce and that went really well. I always feel a little sheepish about frying, but I used less oil than you would in a batch of muffins, so I don't think it's too unhealthy.

Last night was less successful. We still have a lot of root vegetables, and I really like them oven-baked as fries, but I thought I'd try a variation on that. Two summers ago Patricia sent a recipe for oven baked blue potato chips, which were really good, so I sliced thinly some beets, the largest part of some parsnips, a potato and a sweet potato and tossed them in a bit of olive oil and lime juice. I baked them at 400 spread out on a cookie sheet. But I was also trying to cook chicken and stir-fry some cabbage, and Ria was clingy and distracting, and with the different kinds of vegetables some of them ended up a little too crispy! Some of them were okay, but I think if I did it again I would cook the vegetables separately, because they seemed to take different amounts of time. And only try this when you can really keep an eye on them...

Ah, well, can't win every time. The unburnt ones tasted okay.

Wednesday we had lamb with potatoes mashed up from the roast on Sunday, a sweet-potato-and-apple dish and the beet conserve I was telling you about. It's really easy, though you need a bit of time, and even Kenneth, who loathes beets with a passion, will eat it. Ria eats it like candy. Just don't ask about her diapers.

Beet conserve - this recipe is from Lucy Waverman in the Globe and Mail

beets (the recipe says 4-5 but I use way more)

1 T olive oil

1 T water

2 small lemons, chopped with skin on

2 T fresh ginger, grated

1 c sugar

Put the beets on some tinfoil on a baking tray. Sprinkle oil and water over them and seal them in the foil. Cook at 425 for about an hour - until a fork can go easily into the beets. Let them cool then peel them. Grate them or whirl them in a chopper until they're finely chopped. Put them in a medium-sized pot with the lemons, ginger and sugar; stir. Let it sit for an hour so the flavours mix (I will admit I don't always do this since I never seem to start this recipe early enough). Cook it on medium for 5-10 minutes until the juices thicken a little. This will keep for a while in the fridge; it also freezes pretty well if you made too much.

Maple Mustard Sweet potatoes: this is a recipe my Mom makes a lot.

Cook the sweet potatoes until a fork can be inserted in them (boil or microwave). Slice up some apples (we had frozen ones) and saute them in a little butter. Let the sweet potatoes cool a bit then slice them thickly; layer them in a circle in a casserole dish, overlapping one another, and then put a piece of apple between each one (it looks really pretty - this is an 'impress the guests' recipe). Mix up about 1/4 c maple syrup and about 2-3 T grainy dijon mustard, and pour overtop. Cook in a 350 oven until heated through, about 15-20 minutes.

Parsnips - used; carrots - all used (I can't believe it!); still left: napa cabbage, potatoes, sweet potatoes, a beet or two, and a turnip. Kenneth says he's going to make kimchee out of the cabbage ... to add to the huge pickle-jar of kimchee we already have in the fridge, I presume...

Happy weekend!

-Kathy