Adapted from the salad my friend Deb made at Easter, we’ve made this salad at least twice since then with great results. It’s especially tasty now that strawberries are in season!

Spinach Strawberry Walnut Salad

1 bag baby spinach
3/4 of a 16 oz container or so of fresh, ripe strawberries, washed and sliced
3/4 cup walnuts, chopped
1/2 pkg goat cheese or feta crumbles

Keep all ingredients separate and chilled until ready to serve. Toss everything together, bring it to the table, and enjoy! You really don’t need dressing with this salad, which makes it even better.

Here is another recipe from Easter brunch, also vegetarian for my friend Deb. You can also get this recipe from Food Network by clicking here.

Two important safety tips with this recipe. First, be sure to allot enough time for the quiche to sit and firm up – the recommended 30 minutes didn’t seem like enough time. Second, drain your veggies as much as possible before putting them into the prepared pie shell. As Deb said, “liquid just has no where to go in a quiche!”

Emeril’s Mediterranean Quiche

Ingredients:

prepared pie crust (I used a Pillsbury pre-made)
2 tablespoons unsalted butter
1 cup sliced yellow onions
1 medium zucchini, chopped
1/4 pound mushrooms, wiped clean and sliced
1 teaspoon minced garlic
4 ounces oil-packed sun-dried tomatoes, drained and chopped
3 tablespoons chopped fresh basil
2 teaspoons chopped fresh thyme
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
3 large eggs
1 1/4 cups half-and-half
1/2 cup grated Gruyere
1/2 teaspoon crushed red pepper
3 ounces goat cheese, crumbled

Directions:

Bake and cool pie crust according to package directions.

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F.

In a large skillet melt the butter over medium-high heat. Add the onions and zucchini and cook, stirring, for 6 minutes. Add the mushrooms and cook, stirring, until the liquid is rendered and the vegetables are wilted, about 10 minutes.

Add the garlic and cook for 1 minute.

Add the tomatoes, basil, and thyme and season lightly with salt and pepper. Cook, stirring, for 1 minute. Remove from the heat and let cool.

In a bowl, beat the eggs and half-and-half together. Add the salt, pepper, grated Gruyere, and crushed red pepper.

Spoon the vegetable mixture (make sure it’s well drained!) into the prepared piecrust, pour in the egg mixture, and crumble the goat cheese on top. Bake for 25 to 30 minutes until set. Remove from the oven and let cool for 30 minutes before serving.

My good friend Deb joined us Saturday in preparation for Easter festivities, and since she’s a vegetarian I thought I’d make her some eggplant parmigana for dinner. I looked at two recipes (from epicurious.com and food network), merged them together, and added a few touches of my own. It turned into a dish that worked pretty well!

Deb’s Eggplant Parmesan

Ingredients:
1- med to large eggplant, sliced into rounds (about 1/2″ thick slices)
kosher salt for covering slices
1 cup panko breadcrumbs
1 cup whole wheat breadcrumbs
2 tbsp Tuscan Sunset seasoning from Penzey’s, or any Italian Seasoning of your choice
6- large eggs (whites only, separated)
2 tbsp milk
1 jar vegetarian spaghetti sauce
1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil
1/2 cup canola oil
~ 6 mozzarella slices
~ 1/2 cup grated parmesan cheese
prepared pasta of your choice

Directions:
1. Place paper towels on large baking sheet. Arrange eggplant slices on paper towels, and coat liberally with kosher salt. Let sit for 1 hour. Wipe liquid away and rinse slices. Pat dry with paper towels.

2. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Heat olive oil and canola oil in heavy skillet. Mix eggs and milk in shallow bowl. Mix bread crumbs and italian seasoning in another shallow bowl. Dip eggplant slice in egg mixture, let excess drip off, then dredge in bread crumbs and place in heated oil. Repeat with other slices, being careful not to overcrowd the pan. Cook until browned and flip over, about 2-3 minutes on each side.

3. Place jar of sauce in 9×13 baking dish. When slices of eggplant are finished frying, place in sauce. When all slices are done, sprinkle parmesan cheese over all, and place mozzarella slices on top. Bake in preheated oven until bubbly – about the length of time you would need to prepare your boxed pasta, so 20-30 min. Enjoy!

hiya- just made this receipe last night from Cook’s Illustrated magazine and thought I’d share… it’s sort of like a lasagna but with curly pasta. I’m guessing that you can make it more like a lasagna by adding veggies like mushrooms and zucchini, perhaps…  but my 17 month old love it so it’s a keeper. it’s a bit heavy on cheese and i think you would be able to cut back on the mozz cheese or even cottage cheese… the only downside to this dish is that start to finish, it takes about 2 hours so keep that in mind. 

1 pound whole milk or 1% cottage cheese

2 large eggs, lightly beaten

3 ounces grated Parmesan

1 pound ziti or other tubular pasta

2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil

5 medium garlic cloves, minced or pressed (~5 tsps)

1 (28oz) can tomato sauce

1 (14.5oz) can diced tomatoes

1 tsp dried oregano

1/2 cup plus 2 tbsp chopped basil

1 tsp sugar

ground black pepper

3/4 tsp cornstarch

1 cup heavy cream

8 ounces low-moisture mozzarella chees, cut into 1/4 inch pieces (about 1 1/2 cups)

1. Preheat oven 350F. Whisk cottage cheese, eggs, 1 cup parmesan together in medium bowl; set aside. Boil water and add 1 tbsp salt to cook pasta.  Cook until pasta begins to soften but not yet cooked through (5-7min).

2. Heat oil and garlic in skillet over medium heat, 2 min. Stir in tomato sauce, diced tomatoes, oregano; simmer until thickened, ~10min.  Remove from heat, stir in 1/2 cup basil and sugar, season with salt and pepper. 

3. stir cornstarch into heavy cream in a pan over medium heat. simmer and cook until thickened, 3-4 min.  Remove from heat and add cottage cheese mixture, 1 cup tomato sauce, and 3/4 cup mozz cheese.  Add pasta and stir to coat.

4. transfer pasta mixture to 13×9 inch dish, spread remaining tomato sauce evenly over pasta. Sprinkle remaining 3/4 cup mozz and remaining 1/2 cup parmesan over top. Cover baking dish with foil and bake 30min.

5. Remove foil and continue to cook until cheese is bubbling and beginning to brown, about 30min.

Back in August, when I had tons of tomatoes and tomatillos, I asked my friend and colleague Rachel – who was born and rasied in Tucson, and is an excellent cook – for some authentic salsa recipes. She shared these two with me, which she found on Google some time ago. I’ve only made the tomatillo salsa, but I’ve tasted the red, and both are pretty fabulous!

Salsa de Tomatillo

INGREDIENTS

10 tomatillos, husked
1 small onion, chopped
3 cloves garlic, chopped
4-6 jalapeno peppers, chopped
1/4-1/2 cup chopped fresh cilantro
salt and pepper to taste

DIRECTIONS

1. Place tomatillos in  saucepan with enough water to cover. Bring to a boil. Simmer until tomatillos soften and begin to burst, about 10 minutes.

2. Drain tomatillos and place in a food processor or blender with onion, garlic, jalapeno peppers, cilantro, salt and pepper. Blend to desired consistency.

Red Salsa

INGREDIENTS

2-3 cans Del Monte or SW brand Mexican style stewed tomatoes
1 small onion, diced
2 cloves garlic, diced
4-6 jalapenos, diced
1/2 c. chopped fresh cilantro
salt/pepper to taste
2 T. lemon juice

DIRECTIONS

1.  Pour tomatoes into large bowl, using a potato masher, mash the tomatoes to break them up a bit.
2.  Dice all ingredients and add to tomatoes.
3.  Add cilantro and lemon juice.
4.  Add salt/pepper to taste and more jalapenos if it is not hot enough
5.  Serve at room temperature.

… you first go outside into your garden and your basil is big enough to cut some and not worry about the rest of the plant dying off.

Mmmmm…. basil. I threw the chiffonade of a big handful as well as a diced clove of garlic into a cup of cooked pasta, added salt and a sprinkling of cheese and dinner was ready. Along with leftover veggies. Dinner in 10 mins, delish.

I got about a pound of asparagus from my CSA this week, and also found another half-handful at the back of my fridge that I needed to eat up. I used a recipe I found in Alice Waters’ Chez Panisse Vegetables and I must share it with you – it was so simple and so delicious.

Depending on how fresh the asparagus is, there is a woody part at the bottom of the asparagus that you will want to break off – if you bend the spear, it tends to break at the right point. If it is really fresh asparagus, when you push on the cut end, liquid will squeeze out and the woody part may not be there; if it is not so fresh, the cut end will be dried out, and the break point will be further up the spear (much further if it is really dried out).

In addition, I peeled some asparagus for the first time. My asparagus spears were of varying sizes, and to let the big ones cook a little faster, I peeled them by holding the tip and using a potato-peeler along the length of the spear. It seemed to work okay – you want to peel the spears which, if you bite into them raw, the fibers get caught in your teeth.

At this point, you can steam or boil the spears whole, or grill them over some coals, or roast them in a little oil the oven, and drizzling some balsamic vinegar over them at some point is delicious too.

But the recipe I want to share with you is this one: prepare the asparagus spears (break off the woody end, and Waters says you can use the ends for soup stock but I’m not sure how; peel if you’re going to) and slice into 1/2 to 3/4 inch slices, leaving the spear tips intact.

Then take a knob of fresh ginger (I know this isn’t seasonal to spring, but I keep a root or two in a ziploc bag in the freezer for when I need it throughout the season), peel off the skin (a potato-peeler works for this too, especially if the ginger is frozen), and slice first into 1/8 inch slices and then julienne.

In a frying pan over high heat, melt a knob of butter (clarified if you have it, but I didn’t), and sautee the ginger until it becomes crispy and golden brown. Before the butter starts to brown too much, add the chopped asparagus, and sautee until bright green (usually about 2 minutes) and tender. Add a little salt and pepper to taste, and Waters says to pour off any extra melted butter, but I didn’t have any (and might think it a waste, especially if you serve the asparagus over mashed potatoes or rice!).

This was really marvelous. All my asparagus reduced down to enough for 2 people (or dinner, and leftovers for tomorrow). And with my leftover risotto and some more of the swiss chard from yesterday, and a square of dark chocolate for dessert… mmmmmmm….

Tuesdays are CSA days, and in my haul today included a huge bunch of swiss chard, a head of lettuce, a bag of mesclun, a handful of asparagus, and a kohlrabi. I thought I would tackle the swiss chard tonight, leaving the lettuce for a good lunch tomorrow, the asparagus for steaming or roasting, and the kohlrabi for sauteeing for dinner tomorrow.

Swiss chard is pretty easy to deal with – wash the leaves thoroughly, cut out the ribs (leaving, essentially, two halves of the leaf and the rib), and, keeping the leaves and ribs separate, chop into pieces as thin as you like. (I slice the ribs about 1/2 thick, and I roll the leaves and slice the roll across the circle bit thinly into a chiffonade. It seems to work.) Sautee the ribs in some oil over medium heat, and after they soften, add the chopped leaves. Cook until bright green, and eat. Yum.

But this can get dull, especially because chard is so prolific and you can end up eating it all summer. So I dolled up my usual recipe.

I used butter instead of oil (a couple of tablespoons for a large bunch of chard), I sauteed the chopped ribs with half a large onion, and just before the leaves were done, I added a handful of raisins and the remaining capers I had in the fridge (probably 1/3 c, I confess). When it all was done, I sprinkled some balsamic vinegar over the mixture and some toasted sliced almonds (toasted in a dry skillet on the stove top, stirring frequently until brown enough).

I’m quite pleased by the result! And have some chard for leftovers. This recipe, made with a large bunch of chard, looks like it would do for 2 veggie people (the leaves shrink drastically, like spinach).

Sorry for the long blogging absence!

We are members of two CSAs(=”Community Supported Agriculture“), one in Illinois and one in Indiana. The one in Illinois, Henry’s Farm, is fairly infamous for its fabulous variety of vegetables, and its servicing of Chicago restaurants. The one in Indiana we’re new to, ECO/TwinCrooks, which works with an Amish farmer in Montezuma, IN.

We love our CSA relationships, and look forward to pickups on Tuesdays. This is the third year we’ve been members of Henry’s CSA, and we’ve learned so much about seasonal eating, and completely different fruit and vegetables than you might find at a supermarket. We love the fact that our money (paid in the depths of February, to help the CSA farmer buy seeds at a time when he/she has little other income) goes straight to the farmer with no middleman, and we love knowing who picks our food and that it comes from less than 100 miles away. In general, CSAs are also organic, although many are not certified because of the huge cost that comes with government certification which is too much for small farms to bear.

We decided to join both CSAs this summer because we don’t know where we’ll be most of the time, Illinois or Indiana, or traveling. The Illinois share we have to ourselves, and we give it to friends when we’re out of town; the Indiana share we have split with 2 other folks, which means really none of us get enough veggies when we’re all in town but most of the time we only split with one other person. Or, like this week, I get them all to myself. And because we’re vegetarian, we can totally eat through 2 shares of veg, although this week with all the salad we got, it might be a bit harder. But I’m okay with salad for two meals a day, especially when the greens are as good as they are.

This week, in the Indiana share, we got:

• a bag of mesclun
• a head of some lovely kind of lettuce
• 2 rhubarb spears
• a pound of very long asparagus
• a bunch of radishes, greens attached and looking fab
• chives and apple mint
• STRAWBERRIES, with extra quarts available for purchase. Needless to say, I bought one and would have bought more, but didn’t want to be too piggy.

With all the good lettuce stuff, and me not feeling all that well last night, I had a huge salad for dinner. But what to use as a dressing? Since we’ve been CSA members, I’ve stopped buying salad dressings and started buying more cookbooks with dressing recipes in them. If you have a blender or cuisinart, they’re so easy to make, and so much better than the store-bought ones, and I’ve converted completely. Here’s the dressing I made last night (halved), with an end of blue cheese I found in the fridge.

Best blue cheese dressing
from Moosewood Restaurant Daily Special, p. 318, and annotated by me

3/4 c canola or other vegetable oil (I used grapeseed as I was out of canola)

1 c crumbled Danish, Maytag or your favorite blue cheese (I used Stilton. What a waste, you might say! But it makes for great dressing.)

2 tbsp cider vinegar

3 tbsp fresh lemon juice (I even had a lemon in the fridge! Callou-callay!)

1/2 tsp salt

1/2 tsp ground black pepper

1 to 2 tsp sugar

2/3 c 2% milk (I used skim, and it worked fine).

Pour the oil into a blender/cuisinart, add the crumbled blue cheese (or just stick in a big block of the cheese and pulse the blender until crumbled ). Add the vinegar, lemon juice, salt, pepper, and 1 tsp of the sugar, and puree for a few seconds. Pour in the milk and puree until thick and smooth. Add more sugar to taste, if needed. Pour the dressing into a serving container, cover tightly, and refrigerated. Yields 2 cups.

So salad with green onions, pine nuts, and this dressing, a few sesame sticks, and strawberries – sounds like a great dinner to me.

Hope you’re enjoying the beginning of summer wherever you are!

It’s been a few weeks since I have had time to cook anything fun – too much work and traveling. Friday I got to go home for a few days, and as we finally got to go to the grocery store yesterday, we got good veggies for cooking. On the weekends, we try to cook something that will last a few days, in order to get ahead a bit on the cooking when we come home during the week and are too zonked to cook anything.

So, today, we made:

• the Minimalist’s roasted tomato soup (oven roasting is recommended as a way to perk up canned tomatoes, even if they’re your own cans of your own homegrown tomatoes)
• pesto pasta, with leftover sauteed mushrooms, red pepper and onion;
• roasted potatoes with rosemary (tossed in olive oil, salt and pepper, and whole rosemary – baked in the oven on a cookie sheet 375ºF for 40ish minutes or until you think they’re done)
• roasted asparagus (tossed in olive oil and roasted on a cookie sheet at whatever you have the oven at – we were between 375ºF and 450ºF), and
• roasted brussels sprouts (put oil into a hot cast iron pan over med-high heat, heat until shimmers, then put halved sprouts face side down, add cloves of garlic, salt and pepper; when sprouts begin to brown, put the whole pan into a 450ºF oven for 30 minutes or until done).

We felt a little guilty that so few of these vegetables are actually in season – the asparagus is (hence the $2/lb price), but the sprouts and potatoes are from last fall, and the tomatoes are from last August. Who knows when the mushrooms and pepper were from? And the pesto was not our own, even though we do have some in the freezer.

But we could have done worse, as the tomatoes were our own cans, and the sprouts and potatoes can keep (although, we suspect, not for the months they would have needed to). And, in general garden karma, we transplanted some of our seedlings today – basil, parsley, brussels sprouts, four season lettuce, and onions – to get ready for starting our own annual backyard food production. (Nothing doing on the peppers yet, or the Jericho lettuce.)

Although it snowed today, so it might be a while yet before we can plant them outside.

We’re still contemplating a strawberry-red currant tart, from our fruit of last summer, frozen in our chest freezer. But it’s also rhubarb season, and there’s nothing better than stewed rhubarb and cream for dessert… mmmmm…

What are your favourite seasonal foods of spring?