Pumpkin Rosemary Pasta

Following the weekend of pumpkin brownies (found on the gorgeous Tastespotting) I was left with half a can of pumpkin puree, and no desire to bake anything else ridiculously sweet. I also hate, hate, hate wasting food. I figured I should use this to my benefit and make something slightly snazzy for dinner. For the record, this means it would have to be more enticing than cereal, without moving much past the difficulty of say, scrambling eggs. A tight squeeze, but I know that sometimes I deserve a meal that does not get poured from a box. Cut to a few steps later:




I got the basic recipe from Martha Stewart. Be warned that her website features a tiny little avatar of her, staring at you judgmentally as you cut corners and substitute ingredients. I used small shells instead of penne and milk instead of half and half (cause that's what I had), omitted the wine vinegar (cause it was on a really high shelf and, as established above, I'm lazy), and I added cranberries at the end (because cranberries are always awesome). Don't skip frying the rosemary; it's a fun texture and it makes everything taste so yum.

I still have many cans of pumpkin puree in the kitchen, and I consider myself prepared for the worst. I read an article a few years ago about certain areas of the country completely running out of pumpkin puree around the holidays, instilling a moderate-to-severe panic among housewives of a baking inclination.

Lemon White Chocolate Biscotti

This was a really easy treat from Cooking Light. In the same vein as coconut and raisins, white chocolate seems to be a make-or-break ingredient for some people. However, there are so many other flavors that the white chocolate isn't overwhelming. Fun fact: One piece of biscotti is called a biscotto.

Here is a link to the recipe. Below are some hopefully enticing pictures of various parts of the process.

Shredding up green things

I found myself once again with an abundance of green things. Since they were taking up space, it made the most sense to compress them into tiny bits in order to make delicious green things, hence zucchini bread and all-purpose pesto.

Zucchini Bread

Both recipes are adapted from the Bartlett's Farm Cookbook.

I technically could have made more than 4 loaves of bread with all of the shredded zucchini that came out of the monster vegetable that I bought at the city market, but I made do with the only 3 bread pans I had. With such a large amount of food to shred, it was great to use the Cuisinart. Not only is it always fun to work with enormous spinning blades, but the shreds were large enough to still show up in the finished product.




Recipe
2.5 cups of zucchini, unpeeled and shredded
1 cup whole wheat flour
2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1 tsp cinnamon
3/4 tsp salt
3 eggs
1 1/4 cups of sugar
3/4 cup vegetable oil
2 tsp lemon zest (I used lime)
1 cup chopped walnuts

Recipe also called for 1/2 tsp of ground cloves, for which I used cardamom, and 1/4 cup of honey and 1/2 cup of raisins. I didn't have enough honey, and raisins tend to either delight or repulse. Since most of this bread was for other people, I didn't want to take the chance. I personally think it would be yummy.

1. Preheat oven to 350.
2. Let zucchini drain in colander.
3. Combine flours, baking soda, baking powder, spices and salt.
4. In another bowl, beat eggs and add sugar and oil.
5. Blend in flour mixture until smooth. Add zucchini (and honey and raisins), lemon zest and nuts. Blend but don't overstir.
6. Pour batter into 2 greased loaf pans and bake for 50-60 minutes, or until toothpick comes out clean.

Let it cool and then watch it disappear quickly.

Pesto:

Recipe
2 cups of packed basil leaves
2 large garlic cloves (or more to taste)
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp pepper
1/2 cup olive oil
1/3 cup of pine nuts (or walnuts, which are cheaper and still do the trick)
1/2 to 3/4 cup of fresh grated Parmesan or Romano cheese


1. In a food processor, combine basil leaves, garlic, salt and pepper. Process until well blended and scrape down sides often.
2. Add olive oil while continuing to process.
3. Add nuts. Process.
4. Add cheese. Process.


It's a shame that there's no reason to use the nifty shredding attachment, or even necessarily the food processor. However, the outcome is still delicious. This only makes one cup, but that's enough for some pasta sauce or to use as a sandwich spread. Make more at a time and you can freeze for the sad basil-less winter months.

Rainbow-themed food

As if regular old Swiss chard wasn't good enough, we were lucky enough to find rainbow chard at the farmer's market this week.



This made me think of all of the other great colors that come along with fresh food. Here are some cherries from the crop share:



The red cherries in the blue bowl with the yellow background was too much to resist. The lovely bowl is courtesy of my college dining services. During my freshman year they had them for a brief few weeks at the stir fry bar, until they reverted to crappy plates that no one wanted to steal.



Lovely stem close-ups:








The colors!





And finally, a recent dinner of coconut chicken, baked tortilla chips, a bright mango-tomatillo salsa and the rainbow chard in its final, delicious state.



The mango salsa can go with a lot of things, including fish. It was great both with the chicken and the tortilla chips. I didn't settle on one recipe, since there are many and I didn't have all of the ingredients for any of them. There were no complaints, but I went a little too heavy on the lime juice and probably could have used more salt. In short, do whatever makes you happy, but here is a good starting point:

Mango-Tomatillo Salsa

2 mangos, peeled and sliced (if you've never done it before, please check out this website. There's a science to it. Really.)
5-7 tomatillos, husked
1 large spring onion, quartered
4 cloves of garlic, unpeeled
1 red pepper, sliced
1 tbs lime juice
1 tsp salt
fresh cilantro
any other spices or things that you think might taste good

Place onions, tomatillos, garlic and red pepper on a tray coated with cooking spray. Place in (toaster) oven and broil until vegetables start to char. Peel garlic, and place vegetables in blender. Blend into chunks by pulsing a few times. Add lime juice, salt, cilantro and anything else that strikes your fancy. Mix in cubed mango and enjoy!

Tortilla chips

10 tortilla wraps
1 tbs chili powder
1 tsp cumin
1/2 tsp salt
Cooking spray

Preheat oven to 450. Coat tortillas with cooking spray and cut into chip-sized pieces. Sprinkle evenly with a mixture of chili powder, cumin and salt. Spread on a cooking sheet coated with cooking spray. Bake for 8ish minutes, or until they are as crispy as you want. I've also fried them on the stove and cooked them on the grill with olive oil. The extra spices make this really yummy.

How to turn scary green things into junk food

Maple-glazed asparagus







The pictures don't really do the asparagus justice. It was so green and so gorgeous that I felt it would be a disservice to just boil it in some water and throw it on a plate. Luckily, the very crop share that I got the asparagus from provides recipes on their blog, and things in life generally turn out well when you pour maple syrup on them.

The actual recipe is here, but here is the short version: Cook the asparagus in olive oil. When it starts to brown, drizzle maple syrup and coat evenly. Turn off the heat and add sea salt and butter. It tastes like candy, and does real candy make your pee smell funny? That's right, an added bonus.

Roasted Kale



Kale is difficult to make very interesting, so when I heard that this recipe turns kale into something like "potato chips," I thought it was worth a try.

Chop up the kale into manageable pieces. Toss with some olive oil and some sesame oil if you have it (sesame oil brings out the flavor in kale). Add some garlic, red pepper, black pepper or anything else that you might want your kale to taste like. Cover a baking sheet with foil and spread out the marinated kale. Cook at 375 for 10-15 minutes. Turn the kale over as needed and continue cooking until kale starts to brown and become brittle. Sprinkle with sea salt and serve.

One important component to both of these recipes, and many other ones, is sea salt , further proving that it is in fact one of the things that white people like.

Learn more about Horse and Buggy Produce - they got started when one guy discovered an isolated Mennonite market and wanted to share the wealth. You can also learn more about organic farming in general and find a CSA in your neck of the woods at Local Harvest.

Cookievangelist?

These cookies:me::fancy wine:fancy wineperson

I'm bringing back the old-school SAT analogy because finally, years later, it's a useful format. I imagine that eating this cookie is an experience much like enjoying a fine wine. I'd try to be more specific with this analogy but I don't know what makes a wine "fine" except maybe being really, really old. I'm not too picky about my junk food and at first read I thought that the New York Times article on chocolate chip cookies, linked below, was hilariously and appropriately pretentious...until I ate the cookies. You can literally taste lots of different things going on in this cookie. The body of this cookie, if you will. Caramel. Butter. Tannins? I'm still not clear what tannins are, so maybe.

Much like a fine wine, you want to let the cookie age. Well, not the cookie, but the cookie batter. After mixing everything up, let the dough sit in the fridge for 12-36 hours. The lucky people behind this article did a test by cooking bits of the same batch of dough after a certain number of hours. The dough that refrigerated the longest came out more golden, with more texture and with lots more flavors than dough that was cooked immediately or sat for a shorter amount of time. The dough itself will at first seem a bit drier and more crumbly than if you baked it immediately - this just means that the wet ingredients had time to saturate evenly in the dough, and that in 18-20 minutes you will be enjoying some crunchy-soft heaven.

I'm not quite fancy enough to use all of the listed ingredients (i.e. the French and expensive-sounding chocolate they recommend). Crushing up a Ghirardelli dark chocolate bar was more than good enough, and I've even used Kroger-brand chocolate chips in the past when I was feeling extra classy. Just don't tell anyone at the New York Times.

Here is a link to the article and the recipe. I used dark brown sugar out of necessity, which made the cookies a lot thicker and heavier. Still good, but you won't want more than one. The batter itself is amazing, but the key thing no matter what recipe you use is to sprinkle a little bit of sea salt on top of each ball of dough before baking.




Watch on to learn more about the pro-cookie agenda and Cookie Monster's self-identification as the 'Robert Downey Jr. of cookies'. I believe these cookies would make Stephen Colbert proud.

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Strawberry desserts and dolls

These crop share strawberries were too gorgeous not to take pictures of:







After their photo shoot, they formed the basis of some delicious strawberry shortcake. I didn't think I liked strawberry shortcake, but that's because I had only ever had the sponge-like fake shortcake from the grocery store. Making it at home is highly recommended - these came out with the perfect sweetness, with a crispy outside and a soft and warm inside.

Strawberry Shortcakes
2 cups all purpose flour
1/2 cup sugar
1 tbsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
1/3 cup butter
3/4 cup buttermilk
1 tsp vanilla extract

Mix the dry ingredients. Using your hands and/or a spoon, mix in slices of chilled butter until the mixture becomes crumbly. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper and put about 1/3 of a cup of dough down for each shortcake. You should come out with about 8. Bake at 400 degrees for 18-20 minutes, or until cakes start to turn golden on top.





Since I've had Strawberry Shortcake on the brain, I kept thinking about a doll that I used to have. At the time I thought it was the coolest thing in the world, but now that I've looked it up, I've realized that it's inherently creepy, maybe in a David Lynch way.

"Cupcakes hide inside their wrappers 'til it's time to surprise - then out they pop!"

Swiss Chard

(nom nom nom)

I had never had Swiss chard before, and I assumed it would be like every other similar-looking early summer green thing at the farmer's market (needs lots of added flavor, tastes tough and intensely healthy, like going to vegetable-eating boot camp). Nothing at the stand was labeled and I only grabbed it because I heard someone else identify it. That way, I could say I tried it, and if it went horribly wrong I would know what to avoid the next time. I'm glad to say that can't be further from the truth. Imagine, if you will, turning butter into a vegetable. Yes, it's that confusingly good.

Wash leaves and chop into manageable pieces. Cut off the toughest part of the stalk (either discard or save to use in a later recipe - I used it on pizza). Sautee in pan with some olive oil, minced garlic and red pepper flakes. After cooking for about 5 minutes, add some sea salt and some margarine or butter. Enjoy your paradoxically delicious butter-vegetable.

Bananarama

I made the mistake of buying buttermilk for a previous recipe, forgetting that they sell it big and it only gets used in small doses. I also keep forgetting the easy trick of adding lemon juice to milk. However, scrambling to use up food before it goes bad can lead to things that taste quite good:







Buttermilk Banana Muffins

1/2 cup margarine
2 eggs
2 bananas, starting to turn black
1 cup sugar
1 cup all purpose flour
1 cup whole wheat flour, to make things sort of healthy
1 tsp vanilla
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
1 cup buttermilk, forlorn and forgotten in the back of the fridge
cinnamon and cardamom as desired

topping:
1/4 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup instant oats
1/4 cup flour
2 tbs margarine

Cream together the softened margarine and sugar. Add eggs one a time (mine were poulette eggs bought from my crop share. I felt very cultured, but it turns out that poulette is just a fancy French word for hen). Add in the rest of the ingredients, mixing well. Pour batter into a greased or paper-lined muffin tin. Mix together the brown sugar, oats, flour and cut in the margarine until the mixture is crumbly. Sprinkle topping onto muffin batter*. Bake at 400 degrees for 15-20 minutes, or until a toothpick comes out clean. Allow deliciousness to ensue.

*Really just sprinkle it. I had too much topping, and in trying to use it all up between the 12 muffin tins, I overloaded each one and it didn't all get a chance to cook. They are still delicious, despite the fact that they are shedding a suspicious-looking white powder.

Note: recipe makes more than one muffin.