Farm Share Eating To-Go

I usually don't post about the lunches my husband and I enjoy, but my salad today was so easy to prepare and delicious--I was inspired.  We use a relatively large amount of our Farm Share produce for lunches we eat away from home.

This salad used romaine lettuce, potatoes, and carrots from our Farm Share. 

Vegetarian and Vegan Labels

Now Farm Share Eating will label recipes as "vegetarian" or "vegan" if they fall under one of those categories.  As you can probably tell, I am not personally a vegetarian or vegan.  However, we tend to eat a lot vegetarian meals, and since most of my posts are about what we do with our Farm Share produce, there will be a lot of recipes that fall under these two categories.

As a disclaimer, I want to clarify that these two labels are defined as follows:

• Vegetarian recipes are those that contain no meat products, including fish.  They may contain egg and dairy, however.
• Vegan recipes are those that contain no animal products or byproducts.

If for any reason I mistakenly mislabel a recipe as vegan or vegetarian and it's not, please let me know!  I don't want to make mistakes when it comes to this. 

Also, when there are vegan substitutes that I know of in cooking and baking, I may reference them along with the non-vegan recipe, so just be aware of that as you read through the postings.

Thanks!

3/24 Farm Share Arrival

Another Wednesday, another Farm Share arrival!

The Winter season is winding down, which for now means a little bit more of the same.  I'm not complaining because I'm still having fun finding new recipes for the produce we receive.  Quite honestly, the real challenge is having enough time during the week to try out recipes!  Despite the fun I have exploring how to cook kale, chard, parsnips, potatoes, etc., I'll admit that I was really excited to read in our Farm Share newsletter this week that we will soon be in berry season!!  When the season does finally change, different produce will be welcome...especially berries!

This week we received: red potatoes, apples, Swiss chard, baby spinach, green leaf lettuce, parsnips, grapefruit, a carrot, zucchini, a beet, and barley flour.

It was a heavy box!  And as my husband unpacked, we figured out why:

Look how large the zucchini, apples, carrot and parsnips are!  I know it's sort of dorky for me to throw down a quarter for size comparison, but they are HUGE!  This picture doesn't do it justice.

We also received a bag of barley flour, which I'm excited to use!  As I mentioned before, we use our bread maker weekly so we look forward to trying this in a loaf.  I'm also going to investigate using barley flour in muffins, because I have an idea for using a certain produce item in muffins that might rock your world; I can't wait to post about it!

More recipes to come this week, so check back!

Sweet Potato Pie

I feel sort of guilty: I keep talking up how I am going to make sweet potato gnocchi with our sweet potatoes but I just haven't been feeling it.  I really want to try the recipe I suggested, so maybe another post will be dedicated to it in the future.  Until then, I will not mention it again.  I need to move on from the potato pasta...

My sweet tooth has been dominating my palate lately.  So, with a tupperware full of cooked sweet potatoes (which I had baked with the intention of making the gnocchi) I turned to one of my favorite Southern pies: sweet potato pie!

This recipe is AMAZING!!  It is the best sweet potato pie I have ever had, and my husband said it was the best he's ever had (and he has had a lot, growing up in TN).  Thank you, Farm Share, unexpectedly, for the produce that made this dessert!  As my husband said, this dessert was "decadent!"  It was surprisingly light and fluffy; smooth with a more complex flavor than the sweet potato pies we're used to.

Sweet Potato Pie

(from Epicurious.com)

Ingredients

2 medium sweet potatoes (about 1 1/4 lbs.)

1/2 stick (1/4 c.) unsalted butter

3/4 c. sugar

3/4 c. whole milk (we used soy milk as substitute)

3 large eggs

1 tsp. vanilla

1/2 tsp. cinnamon

1/4 tsp. freshly grated nutmeg

I added 1/4 tsp. powdered ginger

1/4 tsp. salt

1 tbs. dark rum

1 tbs. all-purpose flower

1 unbaked 9-inch pie shell*

* For the pie crust, I made my own (see previous posting for recipe) and added 1/4 c. finely chopped pecans.  I used a food processor to chop the pecans as finely as possible.  You have to have pecans somewhere with sweet potato pie!

Preparation

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.  

Prick the sweet potatoes with a fork and roast them on a shallow baking pan in the middle of the oven until very tender, about 1 1/4 hours.  Cool to room temperature.

Raise the oven temperature to 400 degrees F, and place a shallow baking pan on the bottom rack.

Scoop the flesh from potatoes into a bowl and discard the skins.  Mash the sweet potatoes with a fork until smooth.  Melt the butter in a small saucepan and stir in the sugar.  Add the melted butter mixture to the sweet potatoes with the milk and the eggs and beat with a whisk until smooth (I used a standing mixer which worked wonders!).  Whisk in the remaining ingredients (the filling will be quite liquid).  Pour the filling into the pie shell.

Carefully transfer the pie to the heated shallow baking pan on the bottom rack of the oven and bake until the filling is just set, about 40 minutes.  Transfer the pie to a rack to cool.

Root Vegetable Curry

What to do with a slew of random vegetables that must be eaten before our next Farm Share arrives 2 days from now?  This was the challenge we were presented with tonight.  We wanted something different from our usual fare that would use up a lot of vegetables and make good leftovers for the week to come (leftovers are key for to-go lunches during the week!).

Here is what we were working with: green Swiss chard, a huge turnip, celery root (or celeriac), carrots, and parsnips.  We did not follow a recipe for this: we just chopped up all the veggies, threw them in our dutch oven with vegetable broth and curry, and made vegetable-laden curry dish.  I don't think you can really go wrong with curry!  I have to thank one of my readers for their suggestion of using turnips in a curry--that was the inspiration for throwing all these vegetables together and making this dish.

ALL the veggies chopped and ready to go.

We used a dutch oven simply to fit all the vegetables we had to cook!

We first heated some olive oil in our dutch oven and added onion and garlic.  Once the onion was translucent, we added the harder vegetables (carrots and parsnips), along with minced garlic and minced hot pepper.  Then we added curry powder and vegetable broth.  Once these had time to get a little cooked through, we added the turnip, followed by more broth and curry powder.  We let this cook for about 5 minutes.  Then we added the celery root and chard, along with more broth and curry.  We cooked until the vegetables were tender and they had taken on the flavor of the curry, all-in-all about 15-20 minutes total.  I would estimate that I used about 6 tsp. curry all together, perhaps a little more.  I also shook in some cayenne pepper, to bump up the heat a little.

Served on a bed of Basmati rice, this was a nice change from how we often use our produce, and a dish that used FIVE different types of vegetables from our Farm Share!

(Oh Baby!) Bok Choy

The recipe I posted previously for Ginger-Garlic Bok Choy is one of our absolute favorites.  Its a delicious, healthy dish that is light yet incredibly flavorful and satisfying.  While we love it, that is the recipe we have used every time we cook bok choy, so we wanted to do something different this time around.  With the gorgeous Boston weather (reaching 70 degrees yesterday!) it feels like Springtime and we celebrated by firing up the grill.  The recipe below was SO good and different from what we normally make.  The peanut sauce was easy to prepare and wonderfully flavorful.

The bok choy was from our Farm Share and the shrimp from Maine.

The spread before going on the grill (the bok choy is tied with kitchen string because we accidentally cut off the bottoms).  The delicious peanut sauce to the left.

On the grill.

The finished product, delicious!!

Grilled Shrimp Satay with Peaches and Bok Choy
(From Bon Appétit)

Ingredients
6 tbs. smooth natural peanut butter, stirred to comine
1/3 c. (packed) dark brown sugar
3 tbs. seasoned rice vinegar
2 tbs. soy sauce
2-3 tsp. hot chili paste (such as sambal oelek)
9 tbs. peach nectar, divided
3 peaches or nectarines, each cut into 6 wedges
16 uncooked large shrimp, peeled, deveined
6 heads of baby bok choy, halved lengthwise

Preparation
Prepare barbecue (medium-high heat).  Whisk first 5 ingredients and 5 tbs. nectar until smooth; season sauce with pepper.  (A tip from me: if you have a hand immersion blender, it worked wonders to blend the sauce.  The peanut butter we make tends to be dryer than most store-bought peanut butters, so blending it helped to get out all the clumps, resulting in a smooth and consistently-flavored sauce.)

Arrange peaches, shrimp, and bok choy on grill.  Brush with 4 tbs. nectar; brush lightly with 1/4 c. sauce.  Sprinkle with salt and pepper.  Grill until peaches are slightly charred, shrimp are just opaque in center, and bok choy halves are just tender, about 2 min. per side for peaches and 3 min. per side for shrimp and bok choy.

Mound shrimp, bok choy, and peaches on platter.  Drizzle with some sauce.  Serve with remaining sauce.

Tuna Nicoise

How could I have forgotten another wonderful way to use potatoes and other Farm Share produce?  My husband suggested this salad for lunch today, and tuna nicoise is one of my favorites!  Recipes vary from person to person, but below is my favorite combination of the classic and healthy salad.  This salad used potatoes and green leaf lettuce from our Farm Share.

Tuna Nicoise
(portions below for 2 people)

Ingredients
Tuna salad
1 can albacore tuna
2-3 tbs. olive oil
~ 2 tbs. capers
Pepper, to taste

Base salad
Leafy greens
Steamed green beans
Feta cheese
Boiled red potatoes (but any potato will do)
Tomatoes
Cucumber

Preparation
Mix the drained tuna with olive oil, capers, and pepper.  Boil potatoes until tender.  I often cut in quarters and toss with a little red wine vinegar, olive oil, and pepper to give them a little extra flavor.  I also usually drizzle the steamed green beans with olive oil and toss them with the feta.  Arrange all ingredients on a bed of green lettuce.