It’s been a while since I showed off my food, so here are a few dishes I’ve made recently. First, though, many hearty thanks to T&D Willey Farms for providing so many of the fresh fruits and vegetables shown.
Here are a couple of weeks of CSA produce. I missed a couple due to being distracted with cooking when it came in and the camera being across the country the night I picked it up. As Jennifer mentions– it’s very good that she enjoys chard, because it arrives just about every week.
On to the meals. First, a quick “inspiration strikes” dish. We have been accumulating a lot of salad fixings, but had been letting salad making slide to the side and kept making other dishes. This night I made a pretty standard salad– different styles of lettuce, a couple of carrots… and some orange slices. I was a little stumped on what to serve with it– I had some chicken breast defrosted and was stymied. Jennifer mentioned pesto and I dug out the jar in the fridge. It worked out great!
Early this week, I decided to make Slow Cooked Chard. Jennifer suggested a pasta side, but as we started discussing it mentioned that she’d really like risotto. Risotto! This was my first time attempting it; I just used the recipe almost straight out of Bittman. [I didn’t make vegetable stock– I just made up chicken broth a cup at a time from powder.]
The two together sounded good, but something more was needed. Jennifer was avoiding the guacamole from Friday because it was too spicy, so I made a new batch. This guacamole is salt, pepper and avocado, plus some medium salsa from a jar stirred in. Tasty and very quick.
It all came together nicely.
Last night we got some more veggies from the CSA. Unfortunately, I got a late start, so it’s going to be eaten mostly as left overs. The new dish was beet green gratin. (Recipe.) With the materials at hand, I substituted chard for the beet greens.
The other dish was the Crimini Potato Puree with Root Melange. I had a slightly different distribution of root vegetables this time, but the dish was tasty in the end.
I didn’t get a good picture of the two together on a plate– I may try to rectify that tonight!