Stir Fried Cabbage and Dumplings

Last night, I heard my 8 year old utter words I never thought I'd hear:  "Dumplings and salad!  Yay!"

Thanks to pretending to be the rabbit, said 8 yo ate lettuce for the first time ever on Sunday.  And liked it.  So I made another salad, less challenging, as we didn't have to pick out the arugula first.  Romaine lettuce, cucumbers, turnips (the last of them) and mulberries.  We had gone to pick mulberries from the tree around the corner, and just in time, too.  A thunderstorm passed through just after we got back home; had we not picked them all of those berries would have been on the ground.  We got about a cup or so.  Anyhow, the salad was a success.

For the main course, I'd asked my sister if she had any recipes for Napa cabbage and she suggested stir frying it, maybe with a little pork.  I remembered that I had a bag of frozen pork and leek dumplings from that Korean supergrocerymegastore and thought maybe I could cook those instead.  I fried up some garlic scapes in oil for a minute, then stir fried the cabbage with 4 scallions, slivered, and then when they were wilted put the dumplings, partially thawed, on them.  I poured some white wine into the pan and covered it, letting the dumplings steam from the wine and the moisture from the cabbage.  This cooked for about 10 minutes like that while I made a quick sauce:  soy sauce, white pepper, minced fresh ginger, chopped scallion, and a few drops of sesame oil.  We put the cabbage and dumplings in a big bowl in the center of the table and, with some white rice, it was gone in no time.

Farm Share Father's Day

As it seems to often happen, I did have to work today, but I stopped at the store on my way home and got a wee little lamb roast to cook for Father's Day.  While it was roasting, I fried some potatoes and garlic scapes in butter, pushed them to one side of the pan and fried half of the snow peas I got from the farm.  At the last minute, I threw some arugula on the potatoes and stirred it in until it wilted.  We also had a large salad of lettuce, arugula, spinach, radishes, turnips and snow peas.  I am working through that farm share, slowly.

Wonder of wonders, we discovered that the 8 year old will eat lettuce!  (Be careful not to mistake arugula for lettuce or it will end badly.)

Lastly, tonight I started the brine/ferment for the pickled mustard greens I'd been hoping to make from the greens I brought home from the farm share.  I really love reading Hank Shaw's blog.  He has so many unusual recipes and every one I've tried so far has been fantastic.  I'm hoping to meet him when he comes to Cambridge this fall on his book tour.

What's left?  Swiss chard, Napa cabbage, more garlic scapes, spinach and arugula from the farm, and a LOT of lettuce from our mason.  We've already had Korean barbecue in lettuce wraps, finishing up the cabbage kimchi I made last summer and sampling some of the field garlic kimchi I made a few months ago.  And salad.  A lot of salad.  

First Farm Share of the Year

Ever since I started getting a farm share I've eagerly awaited the first day of the season.  That was today.  Usually we just get a little bit, enough for one meal.  Not today!

I came away with:  1/2 pound of mustard greens (and a plan to pickle them, maybe tomorrow), a bunch of arugula, a pound of spinach, a bunch of radishes, a bunch of Hakurei turnips, a bunch of swiss chard, a head of Napa cabbage, 40 (yes, 40. Forty. Four-oh.) garlic scapes, a pint of strawberries, and a pint each of snow and shell peas.  That is a lot of food.  Mostly greens.  I'm hoping Mocha will help make a dent but he hasn't seemed so interested in the radish and turnip greens so far.

Adding to the greens:  last night our mason came to our door with a HUGE grocery bag crammed full with lettuce.  I hope we can get through it before it goes bad!

Tonight's dinner, therefore, featured a large salad.

Lettuce, arugula, spinach, turnips, radishes, strawberries, peas, tomatoes and goat cheese.  With a little balsamic vinegar.  Yum.

Gift Basket

It's almost at the last minute, but I've made the gift basket I'm taking to the stables' Open House for a raffle or silent auction or whatever they're doing with it.  It has:  Dilled Carrots, Pepper Relish, Seedless Raspberry Jam, Maple Pear Jam, Violet Jelly, and Spicy Cranberry Rhubarb Compote.  Plus a voucher for a canning lesson - like I did last year for the PTO.  I tried to avoid foraged ingredients and was a little disappointed I couldn't go strawberry picking soon enough to add some strawberry but this will have to do.  Hopefully it will be well received.

Garlic Scape Pesto

Now I will be the first to admit that I'm not often in the mood for pesto.  In fact, in the farm share there is generally lots of basil to pick, every week, and I generally pass it up.  Because I don't really know how to deal with lots of basil except pesto, and I've never been much of a fan.  However, once I discovered that pesto did not require basil in the slightest, I've begun to change my mind.  I've dabbled with bittercress and had terrific success with cilantro.  Today, I branched out to garlic scapes.

The scapes were provided by a co-worker of my husband, from her garden.  She suggested making a pesto, and even provided me with the basic recipe (thanks, Lauren!).  I was inspired to try it.  I even bought fresh fettuccine!  The pesto was all of the garlic scapes, some toasted pecans, olive oil and parmesan cheese.  At least, that's what I started with.  I felt the mixture wasn't wet enough as it wasn't getting ground up properly.  I added more oil.  I thought maybe there wasn't enough green in it, so I added some spinach leaves.  Nothing was really helping.  Then I decided maybe what it needed was some of the pasta water so I put the whole thing, blender and all, in the fridge, until dinnertime.

Just before I drained the fettuccine I took out a cup of the pasta water and gradually blended it in.  That was exactly what it needed.  I tossed some with the fettuccine and had enough left over to freeze 2 portions for another time.  It went really well with a steak.

Tomorrow is the first farm share distribution and there are likely going to be garlic scapes in that as well.  I have a different plan for those; the farm emails recipes in the weekly notices and there is a recipe for garlic scape white bean dip I might try.

Another Nettle Wednesday

It's Wednesday, so it's a riding day, so that means I have time to forage around the stables for nettles and other things.  I brought back a bunch of greens for Mocha's dinner:  curly dock, dandelion, sheep sorrel, red clover, a little oregano, and some other dandelion-like green.  I also grabbed a small amount of nettle tips and a handful of oregano for our pizza.

The pizza was an unexpected gift; we'd gone for dinner the other night at the home of our mason, who wanted me to meet his wife as we had a lot of cooking interests in common.  She has a tremendous vegetable garden, well organized and well placed with full sun and in a place that is easy to tend.  Her husband built the garden for her, including the retaining wall which held it in place.  He's quite proud of it, and with very good reason.  She is a woman of many talents.  She gardens, cans, makes cheese and cured meats, they even pick mushrooms!  For dinner, along with many other wonderful foods, she served home made pizza 3 ways - with tomato sauce (homemade) and cheese, with garlic and cheese, and with chopped up greens.  She sent us home with an entire tomato and cheese pizza and freshly made bread as well.  Wow!

Knowing the culinary leanings of my children, I sprinkled the fresh oregano on 2/3 of the pizza, and then spread chopped blanched nettles on half of the oregano'd part.  That left 1/3 of the pizza with just tomato sauce and cheese for the 8 year old and nettles and oregano in varying concentrations for the rest of us.  I drizzled the nettles with olive oil and baked the pizza in the oven for 15 minutes, until the cheese was melty again and the nettles were crispy on top and soft on the bottom.  It tasted really fresh and not excessively nettle-y.  Totally worth doing again!

Best Burgers Ever

It's been a tough May and my cooking activities have been pretty stagnant. No one is more unhappy about that than I am!  Between work, and the 11 year old's play, and the weather, and some travel (we finally took the kids to DisneyWorld) and just plain old exhaustion, I haven't had the energy to forage, create, can or do anything fun like that.  I think it's going to change soon, though.  Strawberry season is starting in a few weeks, the mulberry tree around the corner has a ton of little unripe berries, and the farm share is starting in 2 weeks as well.  I'm hoping to make another batch of that ginger apricot mulberry jam I made last year, which was one of the best flavor combinations I think I've ever come up with.

However, last night I made hamburgers that everyone felt were the best I'd ever made, so I wanted to make sure I wrote down what I did.  Usually when I make burgers, I just take the ground beef, add some salt and pepper, and make patties for the grill.  Boring.  This time I felt like trying something new.  I put 1.3 pounds of the 85% lean ground beef in the mixer with 1 egg, some salt, about a teaspoon of maple pepper, about half a teaspoon of garlic powder, and a generous amount of shredded mexican blend cheese.  This made 4 patties of awesomeness!

The other day I watched a woman forage for dandelion leaves near the subway stop and it made me smile.  She wasn't trying to hide it at all.  It made me wonder why people don't do it more.  I mean, there is food out there, all around us, and we don't take advantage of it as a society.  Perhaps the general trend is changing?

Lastly, in a couple of weeks I will be preparing a basket of canned goods for an auction at our stable's Open House.  I plan to tuck in a voucher for a free canning lesson.  There should be a report on that soon, if all goes well.