Cold Cucumber Soup

I'm not the biggest fan of cucumbers.  I think it has to do with how I usually stumble across them, which has traditionally been a too-large piece in a Greek salad.  When making my own salads, I have realized it's best to cut all the vegetables into relatively similar sizes.  The whole purpose of a salad - bringing different flavors together - is achieved best when you can grab all of the flavors in equal (or appropriate) portions at the same time.

Last week I managed to use all my farm-share cucumbers by canning pickles, which I can then enjoy all year.  I love pickles.  This week I decided to try something new - I found many recipes for cooked cucumbers but I was not convinced, so I went with raw but blended cucumbers, in this refreshing soup.  I actually had it for breakfast on Sunday.  And although it was quite delicious, and I'd probably make it again, I would not say it is earth-shattering.  I would say it's better suited to a blender than a food processor, unless you enjoy cleaning up messes.

3 medium cucumbers, peeled and seeded

2 cups yogurt

1 T lemon juice

2 T mint

2 T dill

garlic salt (or raw garlic and salt/pepper as desired)

Blend.

Pickling, and my dislike of "sweet"

I was cat-sitting for a friend who has HBO and also said, "use my beets".  So, I did.  It was a pretty sweet deal.  I also had tons of beets from my own farm share, so I ended up with something like 18 jars.

The hardest part was finding a pickled beet recipe.  Every one I found online called for insane amounts of sugar.  Even my friends who pickle beets (all men, interestingly enough) said to use a little sugar.  Searching for a sugar-free recipe, I came up with recipes that called for artificial sweeteners.  As if. My entire point was that I didn't *want* sweet-tasting pickled beets.

I like the flavor of beets, and it's slight sweetness adds to its depth.  But, and I may sound a little ranty here, I think too often people use sweet vegetables as an excuse to eat more sugar in their dinner.  I have trouble understanding this.  Recipes for already incredibly sweet-tasting vegetables like winter squash and sweet potatoes often call for massive amounts of refined sweeteners.  I've had carrots and green beans that are so sweet they taste more like dessert than dinner.  I'm all for having sweetened vegetables for dessert (pumpkin pie - yum!) but call it what it is - dessert.

Okay, fine, I admit it.  I am not a dessert person.

The simplest solution, to me, was to just use a cucumber pickle recipe.  Mostly because I also had cucumbers to pickle last week.  So I found a recipe for dill pickles, and used the same pickling solution for the beets and the cucumbers, only 'sweet' spices for the beets, and savory (dill and garlic) for the cucumbers.  My only worry is that they all might be too salty, but I think they turned out delicious.

I boiled the beets before peeling and chopping them (while watching HBO), and then used this solution, which I had heated until the salt dissolved:

8 1/2 cups water
2 1/4 cups white vinegar
1/2 cup fine sea salt (they were out of pickling salt)

I packed cucumber jars with a garlic clove and some sprigs of dill.
I packed beet jars with cloves and anise stars, since those were the whole sweet spices my friends had.

I boiled the jars in a water bath for awhile until they sealed.  I've never actually done this before.  But I'm thinking of buying a pressure canner, and then I can preserve my beets in cans, ready for deep winter borscht.

This is not what I picked, it is what I ate while pickling.  Cabbage cooked with garlic scapes and yogurt, corn on the cob - yum.

The wait is over! Zucchini Coconut Soup

I've received numerous requests (from the same person, my only blog reader) about the recipe for the coconut zucchini soup I referred to in an earlier post.  I probably wouldn't have remembered that I liked it so much if I hadn't gotten requests, as I definitely didn't remember where the recipe came from.  It was easy to find, though, and here it is:

one small onion

1 T fresh ginger

1 very large clove garlic

1 t turmeric

3 T curry powder

1 c chopped tomatoes

1 large zucchini, chopped (about 2 cups)

1/4 c flaked coconut

1/2 c lentils

1 can coconut milk

4 cups vegetable broth

The original recipe calls for okra, which is one of the few vegetables I despise.

Only 2 full days until I get my next farm share, and I have about 3 lbs of beets, an entire bag of salad greens (or maybe they're cooking greens?), three cloves of garlic, a small eggplant, 2 cucumbers, and one bunch of oregano.  

I plan to use the cooking greens in peanut sauce, and the cucumbers in sparkling water (for flavor), and who knows about the rest.

Peanut spinach noodles

I think the last time my sister visited she requested peanut noodles with spinach.  I found this recipe, and she vetoed it upon discovering the spinach was blended into the sauce.  I love a good spinach salad, more than most other greens, but I got a LOT of spinach - I wish I would've weighed it - and had consumed 2 whole heads of lettuce by Monday afternoon, so Monday evening I was in the mood for a slight change from eating raw vegetables.  Although now that I think about it, this spinach is never actually cooked.  Plus it's an excellent way to get my spinach without having to actually eat raw spinach.  I'm kind of in love with the idea.

The other thing I really love about this is that regular peanut sauce tends to be really heavy, no matter how much you thin it out.  This might barely qualify as a peanut sauce, since it's peanut flavor is subtle (the sesame and ginger come through just as strong, if not stronger) but it is much lighter and I feel better after eating it than I do after eating a heavy nut sauce.  Regardless, this is delicious.

Here is the recipe:

noodles:

1 pkg Soba noodles

2 T sesame oil

sauce:

3 c spinach, well packed

1/3 c smooth peanut butter (the ingredients of your peanut butter should be peanuts and salt.)

3 T soy sauce

1 T rice vinegar

1/2 t hot pepper flakes

1 T fresh grated ginger

1/3 c hot water

garnish:

1/2 c chopped green onions

Peanut Oil (I used the oil from the top of the peanut butter jar, which seemed like a good idea at the time, although maybe it wasn't, although it turned out okay.

Cook noodles according to package instructions, and then add sesame oil and set aside.

Meanwhile put the peanut sauce ingredients in the food processor.  I had the peanut butter underneath the spinach, but I recommend putting in the spinach first, and then adding the peanut butter.  When I was scraping out my sauce, I discovered some peanut butter that hadn't gotten blended in.

Heat the peanut oil in a cast iron skillet until almost smoking, throw in the green onions and cook, tossing, for about two minutes.  Drain on paper towel.

I ate this dish relatively cold - probably around room temperature - for dinner last night, and I also ate it cold for lunch because I was too lazy to travel to the kitchen to heat up my noodles, but I think it's probably good either way.

Summer Farm Share: Week One: Farm Share is Back!

My old farmshare was cancelled at the last minute, leaving me to scramble for a new one.  I made a quick decision and felt some remorse - do I really want a full share (3/4 bushel)?  Do I really want a Saturday pick-up date?  Why did I choose an Illinois farm instead of Wisconsin?  What if I want to eat something that I didn't cook myself but I can't because I have too many vegetables?  But today I picked up my share and it's amazing.  No regrets.  (I wasn't sure I'd get one at all this week - I got two e-mails from the farm - one told me it wouldn't start until next week, and one said I had a share today, so I stopped by and was delighted to find my name on the list.)

This week's haul, and the plan to conquer each vegetable:
broccoli - tried to eat it raw but it was bitter, steamed it and ate with sesame ginger dressing (you see it pictured in the salad below, but I took it out after I tried it.  it was much better steamed.)
zucchini - sliced and grilled and then threw it on a salad (pictured below)
kale - potato kale soup
spinach - noodles with peanut sauce
2 heads of lettuce - consumed by Monday afternoon.  I impressed myself.
tatsoi - this will likely be the last thing I take on. I'm evaluating recipes, they all seem to be warm salads (although some are then chilled) to wilt it a bit.  I suppose since I ate all my salad greens already, by the end of the week I might want more salads.
beets with greens - risotto!
basil - pesto (yum) which is mostly gone
dill - some in the potato kale soup, and the rest on salads.
scallions - some went in salads, some went in other things.

curry coconut lentil vegetable

I have been told, and believe (to some extent) that your cravings tell you what your body needs, nutrient wise. So... Whether or not that's true, I'm quite confidant on Sunday I was craving fat. How else could I explain making almond-butter noodles with broccoli and this really rich coconut milk based soup?

But I realized today that the beauty of this soup is the vegetable - zucchini -which, despite the richness and beauty of the other ingredients, is what makes this soup shine.

Recipe to come.

pasta puttanesca

My pasta-sauce cooking technique hasn't changed in the last 10 years, really.  This one has olives and capers  and vegan sausage (since I had olives and capers and vegan sausage) so I'm calling it a puttanesca.

Basically it goes like this:
Heat some onion in some olive oil a largish frying pan.
Add whole fennel seed!!!  (this is the only essential ingredient)
Add other things that you might like in your pasta.  For instance yesterday I added:
One portabella mushroom cap, chopped
Pepper seasoning (it came in a little 'Zesty Pepper' pack)
Garlic seasoning (same deal - I was out of garlic or I may not have bothered)
One vegan sausage, crumbled (Field Roast brand Italian Sausage - a gift from my aunt, leftover from Saturday tailgating)
Add a can of chopped tomatoes once the vegetables are cooked and the sausage (if you're using it) is a little browned/cooked.
Add 1/4 of olives, chopped.
Add 2 T capers, without the liquid.

Let it simmer while you cook your pasta.

I also added tomato paste because I had some and it thickened it well.

And I had fresh parmesan so I added that to some of it.  It was plenty good without.