Stuffed chicken with roasted squash and parsnip/potato chips

I'm a little slow in posting this, but Wednesday's dinner was pretty good as far as using up box veggies was concerned.

We had chicken stuffed with homemade ricotta and frozen-from-the-summer basil pesto, parsnip and potato oven-baked fries, and roasted squash with chickpeas. We've already blogged about the parsnip and potato chips: http://csanovascotia.blogspot.com/2011/01/we-were-out-at-kenneths-parents-place.html.

For the squash, I used a recipe adapted from Paradiso Seasons (a fantastic vegetarian cookbook - and a great restaurant, if you're ever in Cork, Ireland).

butternut squash, in chunks

olive oil

1 small onion, diced

1 fresh red chili, sliced

4 T chickpeas (cooked or canned)

1 T cumin seeds

1/2 c water

handful fresh coriander

Toss the squash in olive oil and roast at 400 until a fork can be inserted easily (about 20 minutes). Saute the onion in a frying pan with a bit of olive oil; add chili, chickpeas and cumin. Cook for a minute then add water and some salt. Bring to a boil then pour over the roasted squash. Return to the oven for 5-10 minutes. Top with fresh coriander before serving.

Ria has been eating turnip, carrots and beets in her lunches, while we've been having soba noodles with cabbage and carrots.

squash ravioli with tomato sauce

Tonight - squash ravioli which Kenneth made a while ago and froze, with a simple tomato and wine pasta sauce from the frozen tomatoes of last week. Can I just say those were the tastiest tomatoes ever? They totally carried the dish - I didn't even add any spices and Kenneth was raving about what a great cook I am.

-Kathy

spaghetti squash boats

I haven't posted in a while, but we haven't been cooking with box ingredients much this week. We've still got some turnip in the fridge, and sweet potatoes, though we used up some carrots and onions on the weekend. Most of the onions - several weeks' worth - went to a Valentine's Day steak-and-mushrooms-and-onions dinner on Saturday. Mmmmm.

Tonight I cooked the spaghetti squash. I never have much luck with making it spaghetti-like - whether I don't cook it enough or cook it too much or don't fork it out right, I'm not sure - but it tasted good anyways. I zapped it for 5 minutes in the microwave to soften it, then cut it in half, scooped out the seeds, and put it in the oven at 400 for about half an hour or 45 minutes. Meanwhile I sauteed some garlic in a bit of olive oil, then added red wine (about a quarter cup) and half a can of tomatoes to a frying pan and let it simmer for a while. I added about 2-3 T of Patricia's pesto and chopped up about 1/4 c. of sun-dried tomatoes and simmered them. I finally got impatient, and we were all getting hungry, so I pulled out the squash and zapped each half in the microwave for about 3 minutes. I shredded the squash into strings, still in the shell, poured the sauce over top, and topped it with black olives, pine nuts, and cubes of mozzarella. It tasted really good - and looked pretty fancy in the squash boats, too!

Happy Valentine's Day!

-Kathy

Box day

Kenneth cooked a great stir-fry tonight, using up the last of the leeks, some carrots, some onions, and a few other things. Yesterday he made pasta with sauteed carrots and squash on the side. So that used up the rest of the squash and leeks. We still have turnip and carrots from last week. Sadly we pitched the canteloupe - guilt guilt guilt - I just didn't have a chance to make muffins on the weekend.

Today: beets - beets beets beets! lots of them; sweet potatoes; parsnips; napa cabbage; carrots; mustard beans. Ria had fun unloading everything from the box to the drawers of the fridge, then insisted on carrying around the last sweet potato rather than putting it in the fridge, occasionally taking a gnaw on it and looking to see if I would tell her 'no'. Hey, kid, if you want to eat raw unwashed sweet potato, be my guest! Especially since all of her dinner went on the floor...

Maybe I'll make the beet conserve tomorrow. A lot of people at the potluck were asking for the recipe, so I'll post that soon.

cabbage-apple curry fry; leek omelette with squash and potato latkes

The week got away from me a bit, and I haven't posted our menus.

Last Thursday I decided to use up the cabbage we still had left from the previous week. We also had some sliced apples frozen from the fruit share in the summer. I borrowed a recipe off of my mother-in-law - one that's pretty similar to the one Patricia suggested in the newsletter, actually - and added some hamburger just because we hadn't been eating much meat. This is a really easy supper that you can make in between playing cars with your daughter on the kitchen floor.

Cabbage-apple curry fry

1 lb hamburger meat, browned

1 cabbage, sliced

2-3 cups sliced apples

1 cup raisins

2-3 T curry powder

1 t cumin

1 T butter

pinch of salt

Brown hamburger meat in a large pan or wok. Drain most of the fat; add the cabbage with a bit of butter to the frying pan. Cook on low until slightly softened. Add the apples, raisins, curry powder and cumin. Stir to coat. Cover; cook until cabbage is soft but not mushy, and apples have released some of their juice. Add salt and more curry to taste. Serve with rice.

Friday night our stove refused to cook anything but nachos (I've told you about the quirks of our stove, haven't I?) so Saturday morning I decided I'd better make a bigger dent in the Taproot produce than we had so far. I got up with Ria and let Kenneth sleep in, and Ria was in a great mood, so I could make a big breakfast. I decided to make potato and squash potato pancakes with a leek and blue cheese omelette. The potato pancakes, or latkes, were adapted from a great cookbook by Anne Bramley called Eat Feed Autumn Winter - I love the trend towards Italian/mediterranean cooking, but it's getting hard to find recipes that don't assume one has year-round access to eggplants, or fresh basil, or red peppers. For local eating, one has to turn to more northerly-inspired cookbooks, and Bramley has lots of great old English, Scottish and German recipes. Anyways, she puts a bit of curry powder in the latkes, and they do taste better that way, but I didn't think it would go with breakfast. So I just grated up two potatoes and a couple chunks of squash, squeezed out the water, and mixed them with two eggs and three or four tablespoons of whole wheat flour and a bit of salt. Then you fry them in a bit of oil and sprinkle more salt over top.

For the omelette, I sliced up the leek (including the green part - most recipe books tell you to just use the white, but I think that's such a waste and the darker green parts taste lovely!) and sauteed it really low in a bit of butter. Then I mixed up 5 eggs, about a 1/4 cup of milk, and poured it into the pan after adding a bit more butter. Cook on low until there's no more liquidy bits left, and then crumble some blue cheese over the top; fold the omelette in half so the cheese gets melty.

If you're not a fan of blue cheese, I strongly encourage you to develop a taste, because it's truly one of the good things in life. Start with Saint Agur cheese - I've converted a few people to blue cheese with St. Agur - and a fresh baguette, and maybe a sliced pear or apple. It's a creamy lovely blue. A lot of people wonder why bother developing a taste for something you don't like, but I always think, food I like makes me happy, so why not have more things in this world which make me happy? Trust me, it's worth it.

Tonight Kenneth made a great roast with potatoes (store-bought, I'm afraid), carrots and garlic; canned beans from the summer on the side. Ria and I are eating apples and carrots in our lunches. Oh, and the rest of the brussels sprouts went to my mother-in-law, who likes them better than we do. Still in the fridge: 1 turnip, thawed canteloupe, 1 leek, half a bag of squash, carrots, apples ... and I think that's it. We'll see what Kenneth can make with that tomorrow!

-Kathy

Squash

Well, Ria's working her way through the beets and turnip in the freezer for lunches - neither Kenneth nor I are all that fussed about them, so we feed them to her!

For dinner, a recipe I invented a few years ago after going to an Afghani restaurant - I have no idea if this is anything like what I ate, but it tastes good.

Recipe for faux Afghani squash

1 hubbard squash

1-2 T oil

1 cup water

1 tomato, diced (or 1/2 can tomatoes)

2 T brown sugar

1 tsp cinnamon

1/4 tsp ground cloves

1/2 tsp fresh ginger, grated

1/2 tsp cumin

1/2 tsp ground coriander

1/4 c plain yoghurt

Peel squash then slice the long part into disks about 2 cm thick. Scoop out the seeds from the bell part, then slice it into crescent moons or chunks of roughly the same thickness. Fry these in a bit of oil over medium heat until browned on both sides. Mix together the other ingredients and pour over the squash. Cover; simmer until the squash is softened. Serve over rice with a dollop of plain yoghurt or sour cream.

Box day tomorrow, and we still have a cabbage, half a turnip, 2 celeriac roots, and some random parsnips and potatoes. The celeriac is sitting on the counter so I'm hoping Kenneth has plans for soup!