Recently in CSA Category

I was shocked when I realized there were no local sweet potatoes or yams in the Puget Sound region. After all,  we have an amazing amount of potatoes, and Olsen Farms is my favorite vendor for those. I asked them why we couldn't find local sweet potatoes and they explained that sweet potatoes needed a very long and hot growing season.

So rather than the standard Thanksgiving fare of candied yams, I needed to come up with something else we could candy to at least approximate that signature dish. While our version doesn't use marshmallows, and it does take a little work to get it in the oven, it is well worth the effort and I'd say this was almost as good as candied sweet potatoes and a lot healthier.

Candied Acorn Squash

• 2 medium size acorn squash
• 4-5 Tbsp brown sugar
• 1-2 Tbsp butter
• Cinnamon (optional)

Start by cutting off each end of the acorn squash about half an inch to an inch from the tip.

Slice the squash into rings, about 1-2 inches thick.

Grease up a baking sheet or baking dish and preheat the oven to 350.

Bake the squash for 30-40 minutes, depending on the thickness of the slices.

Meanwhile, in a small saucepan over medium-low heat, melt 1-2 Tbsp of butter and stir in 4-5 Tbsp of brown sugar. You can also add just a bit of cinnamon.

When the squash is just about done, turn the heat up on the stove and stir the glaze constantly.

Remove the squash from the oven and baste it with the glaze.

Return the squash to the oven and bake for another 10 minutes.

Serve and enjoy.

Patricia's Notes: This was quite tasty. You don't peel the acorn squash before you serve it, so the presentation is quite dramatic with the yellow flesh and green rind. You can actually eat the rind, though I prefer not to. The flavor was actually very similar to candied sweet potatoes, though the texture was a bit different (expectedly). I will definitely make this again.

Our second Thanksgiving recipe is a rough take on the standard old mashed potatoes. I love mashed potatoes, especially with gravy. Today's recipe makes use of one of those often forsaken winter vegetables. They're really pretty ugly, after all. Also known as the celery root, those leaves are inedible. Just cut off the top and peel.

You can eat celery root raw, or you can puree it, mash it, roast it, or saute it. For today's recipe, I peeled it, cut it into chunks, and boiled it.

Olsen Farms has a wide variety of potatoes, including some vibrant purple ones called Purple Vikings. These potatoes are bright purple/blue on the outside and snow white inside. They make a gorgeous mashed potato, especially when you leave the skins on for some great contrast. 

Potato Celeriac Mashup

• 4-5 Purple Viking potatoes
• 1 large celeriac
• 2 Tbsp butter
• 1/4-1/2 cup of milk

Peel the celeriac and cut into chunks.

Cut the potatoes into chunks (but don't peel them).

Boil the vegetables until tender.

Use either a potato masher, a mixer, or a food mill to mash the vegetables with the butter and milk.

Serve.

Patricia's Notes: I really enjoyed this. I only used one celeriac, so the mash did taste almost completely like mashed potatoes. But there was a subtle celery flavor underneath it all. Next time, I'll double the celeriac and keep the potatoes the same. The texture was about 90% smooth with just a few chunks. I didn't use very much butter or milk, but this was very smooth. Since I didn't actually make these with a turkey, I didn't have gravy. So I tried to add a few things to bowls of the mash to enhance the flavor. It turns out that Bacon Salt was the perfect addition to this dish.

So we've endured the horrible pumpkin gutting, made a tasty main dish, and now we've got a big mound of pumpkin guts and seeds. We don't like to waste food, and we love seeds, so we decided to try our hand at roasted pumpkin seeds. This was a simple recipe, although a little disturbing, since pumpkin guts were still involved.

When you try to separate out pumpkin seeds from the rest of the innards, your hands get messy. Just embrace the messiness and start pulling out the seeds. You don't need to remove all traces of pumpkin, because you'll wash the seeds a couple of times before you bake them. Just do your best and remove the large bits of guts.

It took me about 20 minutes to get a nice bowl of seeds from the two pie pumpkins.

Once you have that bowl of seeds, wash them carefully in water a couple of times. You can put the seeds in a colander and wash them or use a bowl with a lid on it.

Preheat the oven to 250.

In the bowl, add some olive oil and some seasoned salt. We used Zane and Zack's Alder Smoked Rub.

Spread the seeds on a foil lined baking sheet.

Bake for 60 minutes, stirring every 10 minutes.

Cool and enjoy!

When I was a child, mom HATED carving pumpkins. I never understood this until I then tried to carve my own for the very first time. Have you ever tried to gut a pumpkin? The smell is... well... distinctive. You'll never forget that smell for the rest of your life. It isn't even a bad smell, but it is very distinctive.

The feel of pumpkin innards isn't all that pleasant either. Unlike a lot of other squash, pumpkins have this amazing combination of stringy, spongy, slimy, and springy. You need a rather sharp spoon or a very strong hand to adequately carve out the insides.

So now I understand exactly why my mother hated carving pumpkins. Mom, listen up... "You were right."

Now that I've made my mother happy for the day, we'll move on to today's recipe - Stuffed Pumpkins!

Yes, we're not only going to partially carve a pumpkin, we're going to stuff it full of all sorts of goodness and bake it in the oven. We got a couple of pie pumpkins from our CSA, Growing Washington.

Ingredients

• 2 small pie pumpkins
• 2 links of hot Italian Sausage (ours was from Skagit River Ranch)
• 2 cups Emmer from Bluebird Grain Farms (or white or brown rice)
• 1 large onion
• Any of the following:
• Fresh hot peppers
• Parmesan cheese
• Chopped kale or spinach
• Carrots
• Potatoes
• Garlic

Start by cutting the top off your pumpkin. You want to make the opening at least big enough to fit your hand. Trust me on this.

Scrape out the innards. Save them though! Afterwards we're going to separate out the seeds.

Start cooking the emmer or the rice.

When the pumpkin is nice and clean inside (which could take you up to 15 minutes), rub a little olive oil inside and bake at 350 for 30 minutes, or until the inside of the pumpkin is starting to soften. The outside should still be rigid.

While the pumpkin is cooking, take the sausage out of its casing and saute until most of the pink is gone.

Dice the onion, and any of the other vegetables you want to throw in. Cook them in with the pork for 10 minutes.

In a large bowl, combine the emmer or rice, and the sausage mixture. Add some Parmesan cheese and any spices you want. Suggestions include smoked paprika, sea salt and pepper, cinnamon, cumin, coriander, nutmeg, or thyme.

Stuff the pumpkin with the mixture and return to the oven for an additional 20-30 minutes, or until the pumpkin has softened to be nearly fork tender from the outside.

Serve, being very careful eating as the inside of the pumpkin is very hot.

Patricia's Notes:  This was quite tasty. I didn't cook my pumpkins long enough, so I didn't eat quite as much squash as I would have preferred. I used a mixture of smoked paprika and nutmeg for the spices and the dish had a spicy sweetness to it. I would definitely make these again, especially if someone gave me a pre-scooped pumpkin. I spent about 20 minutes separating out the pumpkin seeds afterwards, and tomorrow we'll roast them up for a tasty snack.

I make no apologies for this next statement. I. Love. Meat. I've always loved meat. Beef, pork, chicken, turkey, buffalo, bison... Not only do I love meat, but we eat a fair amount of it since my wonderful husband is diabetic and needs a fair amount of protein at each meal. However, one of the ways to reduce your impact on the environment is to reduce your meat consumption. Grass fed beef can actually give back to the environment by allowing the soil to absorb more carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, but even with that, there is still some methane production to deal with.

One of the suggestions I took away from the evening with Michael Pollan the other week was that we should try to have one meatless meal a week (I'd go as far as a meatless day for me, though the husband still needs some sort of meat or fish with at least one meal).

So when we found a recipe for baked beans that used (of all things) BEER, we decided to give it a try. I was skeptical all the way up to the first bite. After that, I was hooked. I will never make baked beans from a can ever again. We picked up some great cranberry beans from our friends at Alm Hill Gardens/Growing Washington.

Ingredients

• 2 cups cranberry beans (or pinto beans)
• 1 Tbsp olive oil
• 1 medium red onion
• 1/4 cup honey
• 1 Tbsp Chardonnay Mustard from Sea Breeze Farms
• 2 dried hot peppers
• 3 cups beer*
• 1/2 cup chopped dried fruit*
• 2 cups vegetable broth
• Smoked paprika
• Salt

Soak your beans overnight in water. (I've heard anecdotal reports that changing the water frequently will help reduce gas after eating, but your mileage may vary.)

Dice the onion and saute in a Dutch oven with the olive oil for 2-3 minutes.

Add the honey (or molasses or agave nectar), the mustard, dried peppers, the beer, the dried fruit, and the broth. Bring to a simmer on the stove and then cover and bake at 350 for anywhere from 1.5-2.5 hours. Start checking the beans for doneness after about an hour and a half. If the beans are done before the liquid has reduced sufficiently, move the Dutch oven to the stovetop and bring to a boil uncovered, stirring regularly, until the liquid has the right consistency.

Season with some smoked paprika and maybe some salt. Serve with some crusty bread.

Patricia's Notes: When choosing your beer, go with some sort of berry or fruit beer. We used an Elderberry beer and dried peaches. However the original recipe suggested making sure your beer and your dried fruit "went together". So dried raspberries with raspberry beer. Dried peaches with a peach beer, etc. This isn't a requirement as we found out, but next time we might try to follow this suggestion. We did end up using chicken broth, so our version wasn't completely vegetarian, but that's just because I had fresh chicken broth in the fridge and decided to use it up. The original recipe called for molasses, but we used honey to keep it more local. 

When the beans were cooking, they smelled WONDERFUL. I used to make baked beans with half a pound of bacon and these beans smelled almost exactly the same. They were rich, thick, and almost pasty (I cooked mine just a tiny bit too long). They reheated very well for lunches for the rest of the week as well.

Some days just don't turn out the way you hope. Oh Saturday started out well enough. Tsugaru apples are on  their way out and we picked up a big box to make into apple butter this week. However after that, things just went downhill. But that's life sometimes and even though the thought of take-out pizza sounded pretty darn good, I decided to opt for something healthier and more local. I made Minestrone.

A true Italian soup, it deserves to be made in a truly Italian way: from scratch and with minimal measuring. Here's a rough guide for a tasty soup that takes under an hour to prepare.

Ingredients

• Beef broth (at least 4 cups)
• 3 cups chopped tomatoes
• 2 cups chopped carrots
• 2 stalks celery
• 1 onion
• 5 cloves of garlic
• 2 small dried hot peppers
• 1 cup red wine (optional)
• Fresh herbs (a mix)
• Salt and pepper
• 2 links Andouille sausage
• 1 cup dried pasta (optional)
• Grated Parmesan cheese

Chop the onion and garlic. Rough chopping is fine here, as it all cooks down pretty well.

In a large soup pot, heat some olive oil over medium heat.

Saute the onion and garlic until fragrant and translucent. Season with a bit of salt and pepper.

Add the carrots and celery and saute another few minutes.

Pour in the beef broth, the red wine, and the tomatoes and season with whatever fresh herbs you have around (good ones would be rosemary, thyme, sage, oregano, and basil). Add the dried hot peppers as well. You can even leave them whole.

Turn the heat up just a bit and simmer the soup for about 15 minutes.

Slice the Andouille sausage and add to the simmering pot. Note: If your sausage isn't fully cooked, you'll need to cook it in a fry pan or on the grill first.

Simmer for another 5-10 minutes. At this point, taste the soup. You might want to consider adding hot pepper flakes, salt and pepper, or even some water if the soup is too strong.

If you want to add pasta, throw it right in the soup and cook until the pasta is done.

Serve topped with some grated Parmesan cheese and crusty bread.

Patricia's Notes: You can add just about any vegetable to this dish. Kale and spinach should be added in the last 5 minutes of cooking. Peppers can be added at the same time as the carrots. Turnips or parsnips would even work here. I like my Minestrone spicy, so I used some pretty hot peppers, but you can easily omit them for a mild flavor.

Now that fresh salmon is harder to come by, I'm in the mood for salmon recipes that need a little marinating. If you are lucky enough to be in the Puget Sound area (or somewhere else where fresh, wild salmon is plentiful), you know that truly fresh salmon doesn't smell fishy. However, even the freshest fish, once frozen and defrosted, sometimes gets just a bit of that well known scent.

We buy almost all of our salmon from Wilson Fish. During the summer months, they sell salmon that's so fresh, they don't even want you to tell it that it's dead. Some days we are lucky enough to get fish that has been out of the water less than 36 hours.

While they were fishing this summer, and selling lots of fresh fish, they were also flash freezing King Salmon, Coho Salmon, and Halibut. You can still find them at the Ballard Farmers Market every Sunday, selling their frozen fish. We picked up a nice 3/4 pound Coho fillet the other day and our CSA box from Growing Washington contained a colorful bunch of Swiss Chard this week.

So last night, after a long day at work, we set about to make this recipe. 20 minutes later we were sitting down to a delicious, nutritious, and local dinner. The original recipe called for a salmon steak, but I often have trouble finding those at the market. Most of the fish we buy from Wilson's has the skin on. So I've included two sets of instructions. Use the bold version for a fillet and the italicized version for a steak.

Sauteed Swiss Chard and Salmon (adapted from Whole Foods)

Serves 2

• 3/4 to 1 lb salmon fillet or steak
• 1 bunch Swiss Chard
• 1-2 Tbsp sesame oil
• 1-2 Tbsp soy sauce (preferably low sodium)
• 1/2 an onion
• Splash of lemon juice (optional)

1. In a casserole dish or bowl large enough to hold the salmon, combine 1 Tbsp of the sesame oil and 1 Tbsp of the soy sauce.
2. If you've got a fillet, lay it skin side up in the dish and marinate for 10 minutes. If you've got a steak with no skin, cut it into 1 inch cubes and marinate for 10 minutes.
3. Meanwhile, separate the Swiss Chard leaves from the stems. The easiest way to do this is to fold the leaf in half lengthwise and pull the leaves off. Roughly chop the leaves and dice the stems into 1/2 inch pieces.
4. Dice or slice half an onion.
5. If you've got a salmon fillet, now is the time to throw it on the grill.
6. In a stir fry pan or wok, heat 1 Tbsp of the sesame oil over medium heat.
7. Cook the onions for 2 minutes.
8. Add the chard stems and cook for another 3 minutes.
9. Add the leaves and cook for another 2 minutes, until the leaves are moderately wilted.
10. If you've got cubes of salmon steak, remove the chard and onions from the pan, keep warm, and throw the salmon cubes and the marinating liquid into the pan. Cook for 3-5 minutes, or until the salmon is cooked through.
11. Serve the chard alongside the salmon and drizzle a small amount of lemon juice over the top. If you have extra cooking juices from either salmon or chard, you can drizzle those over the top as well.

Patricia's Notes: The strong flavor of the soy sauce helps cut any fishy flavor from frozen salmon. You can cook the chard for as long or as short as you want. I prefer my chard a little on the raw side, as fully wilted chard often tastes a bit bitter to me. The lemon juice just brightens up the flavors a bit, but you certainly don't need it. A bit of minced ginger would also go well in this dish. For a more dramatic presentation, sprinkle some sesame seeds over the top.

Some weekends, there are so many wonderful vegetables at the farmers markets that it is easy to buy just a bit too much and end up with a vegetable drawer full of food that you just can't eat. If we've had a busy week and have eaten out a time or two, we'll sometimes even have veggies leftover from our CSA box.

So what do we do in situations like this? We make a special risotto that is so forgiving, it will take just about any vegetable we can throw at it.

Clean Out the Fridge Fall Vegetable Risotto

Serves 4

• 1 pound fava beans
• 4 carrots
• 3 small to medium beets
• 2 shallots
• 4 cloves of garlic
• 2 turnips
• 2-3 cups Emmer (or white rice)
• 1/2 cup white wine
• 6 cups chicken broth
• 3-4 Tbsp butter
• 1/2 pound peas
• 1/4 cup shredded Asiago cheese

1. Prep all of the vegetables by doing the following:
   • Mince the garlic and shallots.
   • Cube the beets.
   • Dice or slice the carrots.
   • Boil the fava beans, shell, and peel the skin off the shelled beans.
   • Cube the turnips.
   • Shell or slice the peas (shell sugar snaps, slice snow peas into 3-4 pieces each).
   • Pan roast the beets and turnips.
2. Melt 1-2 Tbsp of butter in a large sauce pot over medium heat.
3. In a smaller pot, gently warm the chicken broth and water together over medium-low heat.
4. Add the garlic and the shallots and stir frequently for 3-5 minutes, until the shallots are translucent.
5. Stir in the Emmer (or rice) and stir to coat well with the butter.
6. Add the wine to deglaze the pan.
7. Once the wine has evaporated, start adding the chicken broth and water, a ladle at a time.
8. Check the mixture frequently, at least every 5-7 minutes.
9. As the liquid evaporates, add another ladel full.
10. Keep adding liquid in small batches, only when most of the previous ladle has cooked off.
11. When you're down to the last one or two ladles of chicken broth, add the peas.
12. When all of the chicken broth has cooked off, turn off the heat and stir in the fava beans, beets and turnips, pea shoots, and Asiago cheese. Mix well and serve.

Patricia's Notes: You can add just about any fall vegetable to this dish. If you have leftover corn on the cob, just scrape the kernels off and add them to the risotto. Bell or hot peppers would be excellent, diced and pan roasted. If you don't have chicken broth, you can use vegetable broth or even water, though if you use water, add some salt as well. I loved the fava beans in this recipe, though I'm not sure they are worth all the effort. Not only do you need to boil the whole beans, but then you must shell them. Unfortunately, you're not yet done as you need to remove a protective sheath from each bean as well.

Tip 1: Precook any root vegetables, peppers, or beans.
Tip 2: Making risotto with Emmer takes about 50 minutes. White rice reduces the cooking time to 20 minutes.

I remember, long before I started cooking local, prawns were one of my splurge dishes. I'd buy half a pound of them and mix up a batch of cocktail sauce. Throw a lettuce leaf in the bottom of the bowl, arrange half a dozen prawns on top, and serve with a dollop of sauce.

I still love prawns that way, but I rarely buy them these days. It isn't always easy to get them local. The prawns that you see in the supermarkets in Puget Sound are often from as far away as Australia. If you want a local source, though, you can usually find spot prawns at the Fisherman's Terminal during the week. Spot prawns are a west coast treasure. They aren't exactly prawns, or shrimp, but are available all the way from Southern California to Vancouver.

This recipe can be thrown together in less than twenty minutes. I used some fantastic cherry tomatoes from my CSA and fresh basil from my garden. You could easily replace the prawns with some leftover cooked chicken if you don't like seafood or can't find prawns locally.

Prawn Pasta with Balsamic-Marinated Tomatoes

Serves 2

• 1/2-3/4 pound spot prawns
• 1 pint cherry tomatoes
• Balsamic vinegar
• Olive oil
• Linguini
• Fresh basil
• 1/2 cup bread crumbs (preferably Panko)

1. In a large bowl, marinate the cherry tomatoes in some balsamic vinegar and olive oil. You can also add some sea salt.
2. Meanwhile, mix the breadcrumbs with some olive oil and toast in a small skillet until golden brown.
3. Set a pot of water to boil and cook the pasta. If your prawns are uncooked, throw them in during the last 3-4 minutes of the pasta cooking.
4. Drain the pasta and prawns and toss with the tomato mixture, some fresh, chopped basil, and some sea salt. Add extra olive oil as needed.
5. Top with the toasted breadcrumbs.

Patricia's Notes: This is the perfect recipe for a weeknight dinner. You can also cook the tomatoes with the olive oil and balsamic vinegar for about 5 minutes until a few of the tomatoes burst to give the dish a softer texture. The breadcrumbs serve as a nice contrast to the pasta, however they are optional.

Today's recipe is one of the simplest and most versitile you'll find. Hasselback potatoes have a beautiful presentation and will be the talk of any dinner party, yet take mere minutes to prepare. We first noticed this recipe on Orangette, and if you haven't yet visited Molly's blog, I urge you to do so. She is an amazing writer and you can feel her love of food in every post.

I prefer to get my potatoes from Olsen's. Located at the majority of Seattle's farmers markets, Olsen's sells a wide variety of gourmet potatoes. I will often pick up a mixed bag of red, white, and purple or blue potatoes and make roasted potatoes on the grill, or use only blue potatoes for a dramatic side dish of mashed potatoes.

For this dish, however, all you'll need are a couple of decent sized potatoes. Any type will work. I love Yukon Gold's in this recipe, but Russets work just as well.

Hasselback Potatoes

Serves 4

• 4 large potatoes (any type)
• Any of the following ingredients or combination of ingredients:
  • Garlic
  • Butter
  • Rosemary sprigs
  • Hot peppers
  • Bacon
• Olive oil
• Sea salt

1. Scrub your potatoes and grab a wooden spoon and a sharp knife.
2. Place a potato in the the bowl of a wooden spoon, much like you'd carry it if you were running a "hot potato" race.
3. Make 6-10 slits in the potato. Cut about 3/4 of the way through the potato. If your potato is well proportioned to your spoon, you'll cut straight down until your knife hits the sides of the spoon, thus not cutting all the way through the potato. Alternatively, thread a metal skewer through the potato about 3/4 of the way down and cut until your knife hits the metal.
4. Slice the garlic cloves, the butter, the hot peppers, or the bacon. Cut the rosemary sprigs into half inch pieces.
5. Carefully insert any of the above ingredients into the slices of the potato.
6. Preheat your oven to 400.
7. Place the potatoes, cut side up, on a baking sheet rubbed with a bit of olive oil.
8. Sprinkle with sea salt and drizzle with more olive oil.
9. Bake for 50 minutes, or until potatoes have reached desired tenderness. The potato will fan out as it bakes, creating a dramatic presentation.

Patricia's Notes: You can really do just about anything with this recipe. I typically have alternated garlic and butter, or garlic, butter, and rosemary within the potato slices. Just about any flavored ingredient that you can think of that would survive the oven cooking can be used. If it can go on a potato skin, it can go in these potatoes, with the exception of cheese. If you do want to top the potatoes with cheese, bake them for about 40 minutes and then add some grated cheese on top during the last 10 minutes of cooking.