Savory Scones

The other day I was sent a recipe through Instagram from my elderchild with a request that I maybe make them, sometime, please? They were for Spinach, Feta and Fenugreek scones. Well, I couldn't find fenugreek leaves, but I was able to get everything else. Spinach, cilantro, feta cheese, self rising flour and then all the regular scone ingredients. Today I put them all together.

At first the dough is dry and rough but the minute you add the cheese and fresh greens it becomes almost too soft. Maybe the greens needed to be completely dry? Not sure. The instructions weren't really clear on that part. Also, I probably rolled them too thin as they didn't puff up like the photo. That's OK. They tasted very good. Even the youngerchild ate most of one and, considering how much green was in there, that's impressive.

Served with chicken marsala and buttered noodles, they were a fine addition to dinner. A big thanks to the elderchild for finding the recipe!

Even More Unlimited Produce

Also in this week's farm share: unlimited tomatillos! I'd saved up a few from last week and got what I could find this week. It's still pretty early in the season for the tomatillos, but I managed to get enough that I could make a batch of salsa verde along with a fresh bunch of cilantro. When I weighed the tomatillos I had 1.5 pounds, enough for just over three half-pint jars of salsa. Two will go to the fair. I'm sure I'll make more before the end of the season.

The other thing I've started is a fermented hot sauce. I got everything into a jar to ferment yesterday afternoon. I'm using red and yellow peppers, mostly: some Korean chilis, a few cherry bombs, and various sweet red and yellow peppers. This may be an easier way to deal with all the hot peppers I get from the farm considering we just can't keep up with them all!

Sweet Potato Soup

This post has been a little delayed, as I made the soup a few days ago but am just getting to writing it down now. While we were touring colleges on the west coast we ate lunch at True Food Kitchen. One of the dishes we really enjoyed was a sweet potato poblano soup so I decided to try to replicate it. It wasn't really the same but it was still good so here's the recipe:

2 Poblano peppers, roasted and peeled, then chopped

4 sweet potatoes, peeled, cubed, and boiled

1 onion, diced

5 cloves garlic, chopped

butter

2 cups chicken stock

1 cup water

salt and pepper

cilantro

heavy cream

Sauté the onions in the butter until soft and then add the garlic, peppers and potato cubes. Sauté for a few minutes then add the stock and water, salt and pepper, and cilantro. Bring to a boil and simmer briefly. Remove from heat and cool slightly, then purée with an immersion blender. Stir in enough cream to get the consistency you want. Serve with a dollop of sour cream and more cilantro. 

In terms of making this again, for that amount of sweet potatoes I might add 1-2 more poblano peppers. You could feel the heat in your throat but it was rather subtle. 

Peach Melba Jam

My last attempt at this particular jam was in 2010 when I broke my hand. I vaguely remember shoving everything one-handed through the food mill and coming up with jam that was mostly raspberry and very little peach. This time, I had an immersion blender and I reversed the proportions of the peaches to raspberries so it was 2 parts peach, one part raspberry. It's still pretty heavily raspberry, though.

The berries came from my farm share and the peaches from that place near my parents' where I often get the half-bushel for canning. I was in the neighborhood last week and got two 4-quart boxes of peaches, and now one is completely finished.

Using the Sure-Jell recipe with 4 cups of puréed fruit and 5.5 cups of sugar, I made 7 cups of peach melba jam.

The rest of the berries will likely get consumed tonight with a little cream and sugar. They won't last long. The residual storm that was Hurricane Florence passed through and was gone by the time I got out there, but that rain was intense. And it wasn't even at hurricane level - I cannot imagine what the people in the Carolinas have been through. At the farm, they basically said that if you were brave enough to be in the fields, everything was unlimited, so I picked about a quart of berries, a whole lot of green beans, the largest bunch of parsley I dared to get, and whatever peppers, tomatoes, and tomatillos I could find.

I hope to make some salsa verde tomorrow. Actually, I hoped to make some today, but SOMEBODY fed the cilantro to the rabbit. I even ran to the store just now but they were completely sold out(?!). Apparently, cilantro is on everyone's menu but mine.

Fish Stew

This is something I've been meaning to make for a while. I had that bag of walleye bits in the freezer and, for some reason, today felt like the day to make fish stew. Don't ask me why.

The recipe was one of the ones I make up as I go along. I sauteed sliced onion, minced garlic and chopped celery and then added 2 pints of tomato sauce. This was then simmered with bay, salt, pepper, and 10 sprigs of cilantro (from yesterday's farm share). About 10 minutes before dinnertime, I tossed in all the fish (thawed, of course) and let it cook in the sauce. At the last minute, I added about half a teaspoon of cumin and adjusted the salt and pepper to taste. Served over couscous, it was just terrific!

Strawberries and Garlic

No, not together. That would be silly.

Yesterday's farm share distribution included more strawberries (2 quarts) and more garlic scapes (16) which, added to the previous distributions, meant I had about 40 garlic scapes and clearly not enough time to use them. Since I still had garlic scape pesto in the freezer, as well as chopped scapes, I decided to pickle them using the recipe in Preserving By the Pint. I had enough scapes to make 3 jars instead of 2, and they're in the canner right now.

When I went to the farm yesterday, I brought the 13 year old, who was the one who picked all the berries. The request was for a strawberry shortcake, and I obliged, of course! This time we remembered to take a photo before we inhaled the shortcakes. That was dessert last night and breakfast today. Mmm.

The rest of the share consisted of broccoli, kale, arugula, Hakurei turnips (we'd just finally finished the ones from the previous 2 weeks), Napa cabbage, dill, cilantro, snow peas, snap peas, shelling peas and fava beans. As soon as I got home, I blanched the fava beans and marinated them and they'll be good on a salad. We also shelled the peas and they were part of dinner last night, mixed with leftover corn and tossed with some of that champagne vinaigrette I'd made earlier. I also made these: strangolapreti (courtesy of Hank Shaw's blog post) using some of the arugula and the rest of the komatsuna greens. Even the rabbit gives us a dirty look when we try to feed him the komatsuna. Made into a dumpling it was much more innocuous. The dumplings are tasty and filling and not hard to make. What a great recipe!

The plan for tonight's dinner is to make a fish stew with the walleye bits I'd frozen after we went fishing last summer. I will use a pint jar or two of tomato sauce, the fresh cilantro, and whatever else I feel like tossing in - I'm going to wing it on this one, I think.  Also I'm still working on getting enough mulberry juice for a batch of jelly - I have 3 cups so far and need one more.

Salsa Verde

Yesterday's farm share was full of lovely autumn things:  a sugar pumpkin, an acorn squash, tomatoes, parsnips, turnips, beets, arugula, peppers, potatoes, garlic, tomatillos, hot peppers, green beans, parsley, cilantro, and a few things I didn't even pick up (bok choy, flowers, eggplant, mustard greens, and so on).  I'm getting behind on my canning projects so took a few minutes this morning to make that tomatillo salsa again, but since I used a green chili pepper I can officially call it salsa verde.

Since I only had a pound of tomatillos I cut the recipe in half and now have 2.5 cups of salsa in the canner.  I used the immersion blender to make it smooth after it simmered for 10 minutes.

Still in the works:  I have about 5 gallons of tomatoes frozen, waiting to be sauce.  I have slightly less than a peck of apples in the fridge, also waiting to be sauce.  I think I have enough beets to make a batch of pickled beets.  I still haven't heard from the farm where I get my Elberta peaches and I'm beginning to think I won't.  That's OK.  At some point I'll roast that pumpkin and save it for pie.  I have eggplants and peppers and greens from my mason and I have peppers from my own plants to harvest and do something with.  What I'm lacking right now is time.

There are 3 more weeks in the share, and hopefully then I'll finally catch up!

Tomatillo Salsa

This week the entire farm share came to me - which is rather daunting.  I now have:  2 pounds beets, 1 pound carrots, 1 pound peppers, 1 pound + 1 quart tomatoes, 3 garlic heads, 1/2 pound of shallots, a bunch of huge scallions, 1 bowl of arugula, 1 bowl of mixed greens, 2 pounds eggplant, 3 delicata squashes, 1 peck of apples, 1 head of cabbage (add that to the 2 I already had at home), a quart of tomatillos, a pint of hot peppers, parsley, and a handful of cilantro and a few raspberries.  I didn't even try to get the blackberries, husk cherries, or flowers.  That was enough!  In addition to cabbage at home I still had beets, peppers and poblano peppers from last week.

There were 3 tomatillos in my kitchen from last week and when I added them to the quart from today it was just enough to make a batch of Tomatillo Salsa.  I used garlic, cilantro and hot peppers from the farm share, although I used red jalapeños rather than green chiles.  So it isn't really a salsa verde, it's more Navidad, perhaps?  I also did not have enough plain cumin, so I used what I had and added a little of the cardi (coriander and cumin mix).  Still, it made just over 4 cups which are in 3 jars: 2 half-pints and one pint.

I have a plan to make more tabouli salad tomorrow, to use the scallions, parsley and some of the tomatoes.  If I don't use up all the tomatoes I'll freeze them in my collection for sauce.  Someday I'll have time.  The apples will get made into applesauce soon as well.  I also have a collection of poblano peppers that I hope to roast a little and maybe stuff with cheese or something.  I'll figure something out. 

Working Through the Greens

This morning for breakfast I made cilantro pesto again (cilantro, lime juice, pecans, parmesan cheese, and olive oil) and had it on a soft boiled egg.  That was pretty yummy!

I then put together another tabouli salad - cucumber, garlic scapes, flat parsley, tomato and bulgur wheat.  This time I have coarse bulgur rather than fine, and it's amazing to me how much it changes the whole salad.  It looks much more like store bought tabouli (although I think it tastes much much better...).

Still have a lot of greens to go...I might end up blanching and freezing them if I don't get to them all in a reasonable amount of time!

The Season of Good Salads

The farm is back!  Today was the first pick up day for the CSA and I have been so excited waiting for it.  Since I started getting a farm share, I've gotten so picky about vegetables that we almost never have salad any other time of the year.

Today's share was:  1 bowl of arugula, 1 bunch of Hakurei turnips, 20 garlic scapes, 1 pint of strawberries and bunches of herbs.  (For that last one, I picked a bunch of cilantro.  The other options were dill and oregano and I didn't see myself using any of them in the near future.)  As an added bonus, we (the 10 year old and I) found mallow peas lurking at the end of the row of cilantro.  We picked as many of those as we could find.  Even with spending a lot of time picking strawberries, buying honey and honey sticks, and wandering all over trying to find the herbs, we managed to get out of there just as the thunder started to sound.

Generally, in the beginning of the season, we get through most of the share in one meal; today was no exception.  We had a salad of arugula, turnips, mallow peas, cilantro, strawberries, and goat cheese, drizzled with balsamic vinegar:

 The rest of the arugula was blanched and used in a risotto, which incorporated the last of the goat cheese (instead of the mascarpone the recipe calls for) and some parmesan in addition to 2 pints of vegetable stock.  I also used garlic scapes instead of shallots.  Served with a steak and some red wine, it was simple and wonderful.

I love the farm.