Cucumber Wakame Salad

When I got my asian cucumber earlier this week (week 7 of the CSA, which was the first week it was introduced to the CSA box), I was excited to use it! This variety isn't found in typical grocery stores. For this recipe, you don't need to peel the cucumbers, unless they are waxed, or even de-seed them. Just slice them up and toss them in the salad. So simple! I used dried wakame and soaked them in water for 10-15 minutes. Since I doubled the recipe, I served this up as a main dish! This is a simple and refreshing salad to make during these warm summer months.

1 medium/large cucumber, thinly sliced
4 oz of wakame
sesame seeds
2 tablespoons rice vinegar
1 tablespoon soy sauce
2-3 teaspoons sugar
1 teaspoon sesame oil

1. Soak the wakame in water for 10-15 minutes. Drain well and extract as much of the water.
2. While soaking the wakame, slice the cucumber. No need to de-seed or peel, unless it's waxed.
3. Mix the rice vinegar, soy sauce, sugar and sesame oil in a small bowl.
4. Combine the cucumber and wakame. Then season thoroughly with the dressing mix. Adjust your dressing to your taste (add additional rice vinegar, sugar, etc).

Spinach Rice Gratin

I open my fridge and it is full of fresh veggies from my csa. It also reminded me of the fresh eggs I purchased from the Redmond farmers markets this past weekend. The eggs came from Sky Valley Farm in Startup, WA, just 40 miles from Seattle. They are truly farm-fresh eggs where the chickens are raised on pastures and are not treated with any antibiotics. Thank you chickens for rounding out my meal!

I typically have some ideas of what I want to cook with the veggies I choose. So tonight, the dish I set out to make is a spinach rice gratin based on this recipe from the 101cookbooks site, using those farm-fresh eggs. It will be enough for dinner as well as leftovers for work the next day. I didn't have any olives on hand, so I added some soy sauce and salt for additional seasoning to the dish before baking it. I used the spinach from my CSA, eggs, organic brown rice, and some cashew cheese.

You can follow the recipe here.

CSA Box Week 6

This is the first week of fruit boxes and my patience certainly paid off. Here are my CSA items for the week:

raspberries, chives, orange carrots, purple carrots, plums, yukon gold potatoes, peaches, baby lettuce heads, green cabbage, fresh basil, asian cucumber.

The fruits look so sweet and delicious - let's see them close up!

Along with the fruits I ate up this week, here are the dishes I made from the box:

Cucumber Wakame Salad


Chopped Miso Salad


Egg Salad Sandwich

Roasted Radish Salad

Radishes can be eaten raw, but if you don't quite like the spiciness of radishes, here's a another way to enjoy them. These radishes are roasted in the oven for approximately 20 minutes. Their radish greens are an easy complement to this dish.

Ingredients:
1 bunch of radishes
3 tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil
2 teaspons of balsamic vinegar
salt and pepper to taste

Directions:

1. Below is the bunch of radishes I used from my csa. Clean thoroughly. Separate the greens from the radishes. Cut radishes in half if they are big.

   

2. Place the greens and radishes (separately) on a roasting pan.
3. Toss the greens and radishes with the olive oil, balsamic vinegar, salt, and pepper.
4. Place in the oven at 350 degrees.
5. After approximately 10 minutes, remove the greens from the oven, or until they are crispy. Leave the radishes in the oven.
6. After another 5-10 minutes, remove the radishes from the oven. Serve.

Vegetable Fried Rice

Fried rice is one of my comfort foods. To make delicious fried rice, you'll need to cook it on high heat, add just the right amount of seasoning, and stir fry it just long enough so the vegetables and rice don't become too mushy. Since my next CSA box is coming soon, I used whatever vegetables I had in my fridge. Here's a quick and easy recipe:

Ingredients:
3 cups cooked rice (I used leftover cooked brown rice)
1-2 cups of carrots, chopped
2-3 cups of green cabbage, shredded
2 cups of celery, chopped
2 cups of spring onions, green and white parts, chopped
2-3 large eggs
3-4 tablespoons of oil

Seasoning:
3 teaspoons soy sauce
2 teaspon fish sauce
dried chili peppers

Directions:

1. When the pan is extremely hot, pour in the oil and stir in the white part of the spring onion. Stir quickly.
2. Add the eggs and scramble until almost cooked.
3. Add all of the vegetables, except the green part of the spring onion, along with the cooked rice. Stir quickly.
4. Add the soy sauce, fish sauce, and chili peppers.
5. Stir for 1-2 minutes.

Asian Cabbage Salad

I had a head of cabbage sitting in my fridge that I didn't quite know what to do with it. I typically pan fried it but I wanted to try something different. Since it's summer, it's calling me to use it in a salad! I think this will be one of many salads I'll be making this summer.

Here's an easy salad to make if you're short on time.

1 head of medium cabbage, shredded
1 plus half a package of 3 oz ramen noodles
sesame oil
soy sauce
toasted sesame seeds
sliced almonds

In a pot of boiling water, cook the ramen noodles. Drain and remove as much of the excess water. Mix all the ingredients together - feel free to adjust the seasoning to your taste.

CSA Box Week 5

Here's my box of veggies for the week:

From the left to right: green beans, two bags of baby spinach, mixed radishes, broccoli, spring onions, free range eggs, squash

Here were the dishes I made from the box:

Tuscan White Bean Pizza


Carmelized Onion & Spinach Pizza


Spring Onion Pancake


Vegetable Fried Rice


Roasted Radishes


Broccoli Mix Salad


Vegetable Pasta with Pesto


Spinach Rice Gratin


Green Bean Casserole

A Tale of Two Pizzas

It's been a while since I made pizza at home. Having a craving for homemade pizza, I decided to take a little adventure in making my own pizza dough and topping. After scouring the internet for pizza dough recipes, I finally settled on this recipe from The Fresh Loaf. I was able to make 4 - 12 inch pizza crusts from this recipe. I ended up freezing two and baking two of them that day. The crust was just perfect - gives you just the right amount of crunch. Instead of the 5 cups of all purpose flour the recipe tells you to use, I substituted one of the cups with whole wheat flour.

I also didn't want a typical pizza with cheese and tomato sauce so I found two great recipes to try. They are both healthy, nutritious and quite filling (no cheese). I used the spinach and spring onions from my CSA box, but feel free to top it off with any of your favorite vegetables. Yum!

Tuscan White Bean Pizza
So as you can see below, the entire pizza isn't tuscan white bean. Since I ran out of the cannellini bean mixture, I had to improvise and whipped up some onions and spinach for the remaining 25% of the pizza! :P

Carmelized Onion & Spinach Pizza

Cashew Cheese

Earlier this year, I had a delicious dinner at Sutra, a vegetarian restaurant in Seattle that specializes in local organic ingredients. In one of their main course dishes, they had used a nut-based cheese for their asparagus crepe filling. It had the consistency of cheese - it was creamy, filling, and best of all it actually tasted like cheese. I couldn't believe it, I didn't realize there was an alternative to dairy cheese. I promised myself I definitely needed to make some cashew cheese one of these days.

One of these days finally arrived. Here's my attempt at making it - you can follow the recipe at Chocolate & Zucchini.

After soaking the cashews in water for 2 hours, I placed the cashews, some water, lemon juice, minced garlic, salt and pepper in a food processor. You can see how it transforms into a puree after just a few minutes.

Mmmm...it's completed pureed.

Banana Crumb Muffins

I had some overly ripe bananas sitting the frig so what better way to make use of them than to mash them up in muffins! I followed this recipe for my banana muffins. I ran out of eggs from my CSA so I ended up using about 1/4 cup of soy milk instead. Makes 1 dozen. These muffins won't last long in my kitchen!

I know...I didn't use many local ingredients in this, but next time I plan to put some veggies in this recipe! :) Why not, veggies taste great with everything!

Swiss Chard Gratin

I made this easy swiss chard dish adapted from this recipe. I added 1 medium/large yellow potato to the recipe which made it more of a main course. Potatoes were added and sauteed for a few minutes before putting in the swiss chard stalks. The eggs, swiss chard, and potatoes came from my CSA box. Enjoy!

Salads Galore!

I didn't intend to make a dinner full of salads but it just happened to come out that way! It was a great way to clear a lot of veggies I had in the frig. Can you say salad buffet? I guess you can call it summer cleaning. It's great for a hot summer evening to cool you off after a warm day out.

Here was my dinner - Roasted Beets Salad, Broccoli Mix Salad with dressing, and Lettuce Salad.

The broccoli salad was delicious! The combination of broccoli sprinkled with some gala apples, crisy shallots, and red onions topped with the almond butter-based salad dressing was actually quite filling and flavorful. I didn't have any walnuts on hand (the recipe had called for it) but it was still great. Next time I will definitely need to add it to the mix! Here's the close up of the salad. Yummm! :)

Curried Pea Soup

This is one of my favorite soups so far. This pea soup is packed with flavor and nutrients! I normally love making my own vegetable broth, but since I didn't have any on hand, I purchased organic vegetable base from Better Than Bouillon. Boy, it made the soup so much more flavorful! The small amount of curry definitely gave the soup just the right amount of spice and punch to it.

Serves 6-8.
Ingredients
3 tablespoons butter
2 cloves garlic, minced
2 onions, chopped
2 stalks of celery, chopped
2 medium potatoes, chopped
1 carrot, chopped
2 1/2 cups fresh shelled peas
1/4 teaspoon sugar
2 teaspoon of curry powder
3-4 cups vegetable stock (you can use other soup bases if you're not a vegetarian)
2 cups of milk
salt and pepper to taste

1. Melt the butter and add garlic, onion, celery, carrots, and potatoes to the medium pot. Saute for a few minutes until soft.
2. Add the peas, sugar, curry and 2 cups of stock. Cover and summer for 15 minutes until all the vegetables are tender.
3. Puree with a hand blender one batch at a time. Pour back into the pot; add remaining stock and enough milk for desired consistency.
4. Turn off heat - keep warm on stove.
5. Add salt and pepper. Serve either hot or cold.

Here are the fresh peas after they've been shelled! They look so delicious already!

CSA Box Week 4 and Cherries!

Here's my summer CSA box for this week! Yum!

Along the way to picking up my box, I couldn't resist getting a bunch of Rainier cherries - they were right next to the South 47 Farm on NE 124th St in Redmond. Yum! they were sweet and juicy grown in Yakima Valley! Here is just a sampling:

Here were some of the dishes I made from these veggies:

Swiss Chard Gratin


Curried Pea Soup


Roasted Beets


Asian Cabbage Salad


Snap Peas and tofu stir fry

Easy Lettuce Salad

This is a very healthy and refreshing lettuce salad that you can easily make in minutes!

Ingredients:
1 medium head of lettuce (I used red leaf, but you can use a variety of lettuce types)
2-3 avocados, sliced into 1/2 inch cubes
2 medium carrots, julienned
2 tomatoes
1-2 T balsamic vinegar
2-3 T extra virgin olive oil
hard boiled eggs (optional)

Serves about 4.

Wash the lettuce leaves and spin in a salad spinner to remove excess water. Tear the leaves into bite size pieces. Combine the remaining ingredients into a large bowl and serve!

Roasted Beets and Sauteed Beet Greens

Beets! Here's another vegetable I've never tried before. You can just tell they are super healthy for you from its deep red/purplish color. One cup of beets has 2g of fiber, 2g protein, and is a great source of vitamin C, folate, manganese, and potassium.

I made this simple side dish that uses all parts of the beet, including its leafy greens. Just allot enough time (up to 1 hour) to roast the beets. I used a combination of red ace and chioggia beets I got from my csa. And I left the skin on. If you want to remove the skins, do so after you have roasted them. Adopted from this recipe:

Ingredients:

• 1 bunch of beets with greens, cut into 2-3 inch pieces
• 1/4 C olive oil
• 2 cloves of garlic, minced
• 2 T chopped onion
• salt & pepper to taste
• 1 tablespoon red wine vinegar or butter (optional)

Directions:

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Wash the beets thoroughly, leaving the skins on, and remove the greens. Rinse greens, removing any large stems, and set aside. Place the beets in a small baking dish and toss with 2 tablespoons of olive oil.
2. Cover and bake for 45-60 minutes or until you can easily slice a knife through the largest beet.
3. When the roasted beets are almost done, heat the remaining 2 tablespoon of olive oil in a skillet over medium-low heat. Add the garlic and onions and cook for a minute. Stir in the beet greens and cook until greens are wilted and tender. Season with salt and pepper.
4. When the beets are done, drench with red wine vinegar or butter. Mix in the greens and serve.

Corn & Fava Bean Risotto

I've never eaten fava beans before so here's my first attempt at using them! Fava beans are legumes that are packed with nutrients. Just 1 cup contains 9g of fiber, 13g protein, 14% of your daily iron intake, and 6% of your daily calcium intake!

I wanted to make a dish that not only brought out the springtime vegetables but also was filling. This followed this risotto recipe -

Here are the fava beans: these fava beans had been stored for about a week which is why their ends are a bit brown.

One hour later...here are the beans after blanching them in boiling water and de-shelling them.

Voila!

Summer CSA session just started!

I'm so excited that summer is here (though it doesn't seem like it here in Seattle)! My summer CSA just began. I have begun receiving my weekly food box through Growing Washington's Local Choice Food Box where I have the luxury of choosing from the weekly selection of available vegetables. Below are some of the pictures of the food I have received. They are loaded with nutrients and calling me to be eaten!

Week 1 Food Box

Week 3 Food Box

Here are some of the dishes I made with these wonderful veggies!

Corn and Fava Bean Risotto


Roasted Beet Salad


Easy Lettuce Salad


Curried Pea Soup