Elizabeth * October 31 * Dinner(s)
It is appropriate that I should do this today, as we are marking the end of the CSA season - yesterday we got our last box for the year (and thank God, our last butternut squash). It has been a lovely and deeply satisfying experience to eat the changing seasons. However, in blogging we have slacked off. Kelly went back to school, I got busy with multiple projects, we got a little blogged out. Nonetheless, we have been collecting photos, some of which I will post here and now, with some attempt at recollection of the recipes. Kelly will do the same later on with the baking, which as you know is her department.
The first dish represented is from around the first week of September. It is a combination of a couple of recipes I love. One is my mom's pork chops, among my favorite dishes from my childhood. She slow-bakes them in a mixture of celery and onions in butter, and then tops them with sharp white cheddar. They melt in your mouth. For a faster and slimmer version, I quick pan-fried a pork chop and then topped it with sauteed onions and celery. This is combined with another favorite, from the Sopranos Cookbook: Pan-fried pork chops topped with pickled banana peppers. We have made these peppers several times - they are best when made with hot peppers from Fournie Farms in Collinsville, IL. See post of July 31, 2010 for peppers recipe and Sopranos link. I served this with fresh CSA zucchini and onion saute and some mashed potatoes. We liked it.
Second you see before you a dish we liked so much and ate so fast that I can hardly remember what was in it. We bought some fresh pork sausage from Crafthouse and fresh wild mushrooms from River Valley at Glenwood Sunday Market. I sauteed these items together with some onions, garlic, crushed chilis, and put them on some linguini. A little pecorino rounds it out and IT WAS AWESOME.
Third is the result of a craving I had for a burger. Kelly made me a turkey burger with blue cheese crumbles and bacon, fresh summer tomatoes, and baby field greens, on nutty wheat bread. She served it with some CSA kale chips and roasted yellow potatoes. Kale chips are like salty roasted fairy wings.
When Kelly came back from Austin in September, she brought back not only a bag of breakfast tacos for me from Maudie's (eaten in the car on the way home from O'Hare), but a selection of exciting spices from Central Market, one of my favorite places on earth. Among these was a jerk rub that I rubbed all over some chicken legs from Whole Foods, which will do in the absence of Central Market. Image four shows said chicken leg, pan-blackened and then finished in the oven, accompanied by some steamed CSA broccoli, fresh mini-yellow tomatoes courtesy of Jaime Hotz, and some rough-smashed CSA potatoes with sour cream and black pepper. K is currently moaning at the remembrance of this chicken. It was very spicy and VERY delicious.
Following that is one of many butternut squash dishes of the fall. We have gotten ALOT of squashes. We are both a little ambivalent about squash - I like it, but can get over it fast, and K is suspicious of it in most forms (she says it's too big). We have enjoyed it in many forms, and this was among the best. We discovered we both like it best when it is completely squashed squash. Here is a risotto made with butternut and fresh sage, both from the CSA, that was delish. Our favorite, a similar dish to this, was a fusilli pasta with a sort of squash sauce also made with garlic, sage, hot pepper, and pecorino.
Next to last please observe a delicata squash stuffed with sauteed kale, white beans, and hot turkey italian sausage with pecorino. Kelly very adventurously made this for me last week as I was going into tech for three simultaneous shows. It was great for a late dinner last weekend and great for lunch in between. Thanks, baby!
Last but certainly not least is tonight's dinner. Due to a back-log of veg and two weeks of overindulgence in the dining department, I wanted to make a homey but not too heavy soup with lots of good stuff in it. After about two hours of messing around in the kitchen, I eventually produced the above. It is beef, wild mushroom, and barley soup with carrots, turnip, celery, potato, onion, white beans, fresh thyme and parsley, in a chicken/beef/chardonnay broth. Billie Jo, make this soup. It is rich and very flavorful and filling and tastes like fall. We ate it with Russian pumpernickel toast with laughing cow cheese. Most of the veg and all the herbs are from Angelic, the mushrooms from River Valley again but via Green City Market this time, and the chardonnay from Markko Vineyard, Conneaut, OH, one of my many homes.
So, that's a brief catching up with some highlights of the last 6 weeks! We joined the CSA again for next year already, and in the off-season I am looking forward to exploring some more local vendors now that we won't be landing a load of veg automatically every week! I feel inspired by a great article in Cooking Light this week about artisan food products, and feel so lucky to be in such a great food city surrounded by plentiful lands. We scored some great stuff at Green City this weekend with Dad, Jackie, and Gwenda, so look forward to some lamb stew soon!
Kelly - Later That Night - October 31
Can I just say a few things?
(1) I have really missed the blog. Flauto has been insanely busy and a little blog burned and I have been itching to get back. Honestly, however, it's only half as fun with out my partner in blogging. In short, so glad that she did the turbo blog.
(2) THIS FOOD WAS SOOOOOO GOOD. I'd shank someone for that jerk chicken leg right now. The pork chops with the hot peppers were amazing (and we in fact have more peppers in the fridge just waiting to be pickled), kale chips rock the house (and are so, so, so, so easy), squash does not suck if you disguise it, and tonight's soup was amazing. We eat beef so seldom that it's kind of a treat to do so. This soup had a twinge of the hamburger noodle soup that we used to make in the mid 1990s.
(3) I AM SO SICK OF SQUASH!!! I find foods that are out of scale kind of creepy (e.g. baby carrots, baby corn, fava beans, hominy--although I've learned to give it a pass, and squash). For those of you who don't know, until my mid to late 20s I really only ate white and brown foods. My nickname in college was Kelly the carnivore. Some old habits die hard. In short, I'll miss the CSA boxes, but not the squash. We just visited our CSA boxmates today to pick up our last shipment and their counter was filled with a backlog of squash. It was like a big butternut nightmare.
(4) This summer has taught me not to fear some foods (even if squash are still eerie) and that farmers' markets are not necessarily a money suck and a hippie conspiracy.
(5) In case it doesn't come through in the blog, I want to say that I sure did marry well. Flauto can cook the dickens out of pretty much everything and I count myself a VERY lucky woman.
(6) Keep your eyes open for an upcoming blog post that will chronicle the last few baked goods that I made from the box. Talk soon (eat sooner).
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