A+ Dinner: Italian Sausage and Rapini

I prepared an awesome dinner tonight: I cooked Italian sausage in diced tomatoes with crushed garlic. I made a salad of mixed, spicy greens, which I dressed in a balsamic vinaigrette. I made the crispiest, chewiest garlic bread from a sourdough boule. And I sautéed a bunch of rapini.

Rapini, I discovered through Google this weekend, is the same thing as broccoli raab.  When I found out that I unknowingly picked up in my CSA this past weekend a bunch of broccoli raab (which Clear Brook Farm had marketed as rapini) I was disappointed.  As I’ve mentioned before, I’m not too fond of broccoli raab’s bitter flavor.  But in the interest of incorporating more veggies into my diet and eating all the vegetables I get in my CSA before they go bad, I prepared it to go with this geshmak meal of Italian sausage and buttery garlic bread.  

I found a Rachel Ray recipe that sounded like it would make the rapini palatable.  It called for first sautéing the rapini in olive oil with sliced garlic, then simmering it in some chicken stock to mellow the bitterness of the greens. The technique worked, and the chicken stock gave the rapini a pleasant flavor.  Had I not bought the rapini myself, I never would have known what I had cooked was brocoli raab.  

Eric wasn’t in the mood for the cooked greens, so I wound up eating all the broccoli raab. 

Speaking of Eric, he just came into the living room with a big mug of hot chocolate topped with whipped cream for me, so my top priority now is downing this hot chocolate before it gets cold.

Better Roasted Vegetables

I’ve been roasting a lot of vegetables this fall because I’m getting so many in my CSA each week, but I haven’t been entirely happy with the way they’ve been coming out. 

When I cook them, I roast a variety of vegetables on the same rimmed baking sheet, usually some combination of beets, carrots, sweet potatoes, brussell sprouts and cauliflower.  I try to cut all the veggies so that they’re approximately the same size.  I drizzle them with olive oil, sprinkle them with salt and pepper, give them a good toss, and roast them in a 425 degree oven for 40 to 60 minutes.  Every 20 minutes, I toss them on the baking sheet. 

They always taste delicious, but they get a little too brown–the beets in particular. (I guess that’s because they have such a high sugar content). In fact, my roasted vegetables always come out slightly burned.

Saturday night I roasted beets, rainbow carrots, garlic and brussell sprouts.  I cooked them at 425 degrees for only 40 minutes, I think, and they were still kind of burned. 

The next night, I roasted exactly 10 brussell sprouts exclusively.  Instead of cooking them on a rimmed baking sheet, I put them in small ceramic baking dish with low sides.  Instead of roasting them at 425, I cooked them at 350.  I tossed them at 20 minutes, and after 40 minutes, I thought they were done. The brussell sprouts weren’t burned, but they weren’t tender enough for my taste, either.  They could have incubated longer.

I’m not sure why my roasted vegetables aren’t coming out better.  They taste delicious, but they’re just too browned. I’m wondering if I’m not using enough olive oil.  I’m going to continue to roast them at a lower temperature (35o degrees) and just cook them longer.  I hope that helps.

If you have any tips or techniques for cooking roasted vegetables, I’d be much obliged if you’d share them here!

This Week’s Clear Brook Farm CSA

1 acorn squash

1 butternut squash

3 lbs. sweet potatoes

3 lbs. regular potatoes

3 lbs. rainbow beets

1 bag mixed greens

1 bag of spinach

1 head of lettuce

1 head of broccoli

1 bunch of rapini

1 bunch of parsley

This week’s haul was so big because there’s no pick-up next weekend.

Spigarello

This week’s CSA featured a green I’d never previously eaten, even though it had been in two previous farm shares (one a few weeks ago and one last year): Spigarello.

When it debuted in last year’s share, it sadly went to waste. I didn’t know what this fancy green was, how to cook it, or how to pronounce its name.  The spigarello that came in my CSA a few weeks ago sadly met the same fate: I never wrapped it in damp paper towels before I put it in my fridge and it went limp a few hours later.  I tried to revive it, but to no avail.  

When I saw that spigarello was in my share this week, I was excited and dubious. As much as I like my nachos and potato skins, I love my greens, and I was eager to try something new. Yet I worried the spigarello would taste bitter, like broccoli raab. (Or is it broccolini that I’m thinking of?) 

I wound up cooking some of the spigarello for lunch on Sunday. Clear Brook Farm recommended cooking it with some garlic and crushed red pepper flakes in olive oil, which I did. It was delicious!  I tried some of the spigarello raw before I cooked it, and it just tasted green.  Honestly, the flavor was rather nondescript, but not at all unpleasant.  I made it again to go with my lunch today, carrot ginger soup.

I like the spigarello so much that I don’t want to share it with Eric.

Lemon Chicken with Rice and Broccoli

Tonight I made one of my mom’s recipes, “Chicken Francais,” for dinner.  Eric loves this meal.  So much that he ate three and a half pieces of chicken. It’s fairly simple to make and oh-so-tasty, thanks to all the lemon and butter in the sauce. 

I served the chicken with brown basmati rice and broccoli, which I first sautéed in a little bit of olive oil with some sliced garlic, then steamed. It was a really nice dinner for a Monday night.

Nacho Nights

Last night, in honor of NFL sunday, I made nachos for dinner.  I got the idea to make nachos specifically for dinner from a co-worker, Tom Wailgum, who once told me that he and his wife Karin were splurging on home-made nachos for dinner one Friday night.  (I get the sense that Tom and Karin generally eat pretty healthy.)

Oddly, I never considered making my own nachos–let alone for dinner–before Tom mentioned it.  It’s odd because I love football food, and come Sunday, when I have time, I like to put out a spread for Eric and I (and any random person who happens to stop by) to graze on while our beloved New England Patriots kick butt.  Past spreads have featured steak and blue cheese paninis with caramelized onions, venison Philly cheese steaks, hot clam dip and crackers, potato skins, and porcini mushroom and bacon dip.  

I wound up making the nachos for dinner Saturday night, too.  I had been planning to serve for dinner the carrot ginger soup I had made Saturday afternoon, but my craving for nachos was too big to put off for another day.  After eating nachos two nights in a row, my carving has been sufficiently sated. 

Here’s how I made my nachos:

1. Brown one pound of ground beef in a skillet.  When just cooked, add an envelope of taco seasoning mix and two-thirds of a cup of water and simmer until water mixture has evaporated.

2. Meanwhile, spread a bunch of tortilla chips evenly out on a round pizza pan.  Sprinkled with cooked meat, shredded cheddar cheese and anything else you wish to add, such as chopped jalapeno peppers or sliced olives.  

3. Adjust oven rack to middle of oven and heat broiler.  Broil nachos on middle rack for two minutes.  Serve with sour cream, salsa and guacamole.

I have a little bit of ground been leftover from the nachos.  I’m going to use it in a “nacho” baked potato later this week: I’ll bake the potato and top it with the leftover ground beef, cheddar cheese (or better yet, salsa con queso!), salsa and sour cream.  Damn.  I can’t wait for later this week!

I Like Tofu

Whenever I cook tofu, I can’t help but think of a song by the Krishna punk band Baby Gopal. I don’t know the name of the song, but the chorus goes something like, “I like tofu, I like tofu…” and on and on.  I heard it for the first (and last time) when I saw Baby Gopal perform at the Rat in Boston one straightedge Sunday afternoon when I was in high school and flirting with Krishna consciousness. (The flirtation, which was short-lived, alas, consisted of me meeting a cute Hare Krishna in Harvard Square one Saturday, accepting an invitation from him to go to a vegetarian dinner, and giving him a $5 donation for a Bhagavad Gita.)

And so when I was frying slices of tofu tonight for dinner, I thought of Baby Gopal, sang “I like tofu” over and over in my head, and wondered whatever happened to that Bhagavad Gita.

I served the tofu with brown basmati rice and braised baby bok choy (leftover from week 3 of my CSA).

Clear Brook Farm CSA Week #5

I got my weekly e-mail from Clear Brook Farm announcing the contents of this week’s farm share (drum roll, please): broccoli, rainbow carrots, regular carrots, gilfeather turnip, broccoli leaf (raab), garlic, onions, arugula and cabbage.

I was psyched to see that we’re going to get so many carrots in this week’s share. I was hoping we’d get carrots so that I could make Alice’s awesome carrot ginger soup. I haven’t made it yet this fall. Since I still have about two pounds of carrots leftover from week three, I plan to make a double batch of the soup and freeze a bunch of it.

I don’t like broccoli raab, so I’ll probably replace it with a second head of arugula. That way I can use one head in a salad (or I can wilt it) and make pesto from another head. If there’s something in our farm share that we really don’t want, Clear Brook Farm lets us swap it out for something else, which is awesome.

Pantry Cooking: Spaghetti with Clams and Garlic

Even when money was tight, my parents’ pantry was always well-stocked when I was a kid—with Campbell’s and Progresso soups, Near East Rice Pilaf, cans of Bumble Bee tuna, Kraft Macaroni & Cheese, Prince pasta, and jars of Prego spaghetti sauce, Hellman’s mayonnaise, JIF, Welch’s grape jelly, and my childhood favorite, marshmallow fluff.

Since the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, it should come as no surprise that my pantry is always teeming with food.  My cupboard contains many of the same pantry staples as my parents’—the JIF, the jelly, the fluff, the mayo, the pasta, the tuna and the cream of mushroom soup—in addition to some foods that my parents never had on hand, such as quinoa, dried porcini mushrooms and wasabi powder. Like my mother, I like to have back-ups in case we ever run out of anything that’s in the fridge during the week.  And when we finally crack that sealed bottle of ketchup from the pantry, I promptly note on my grocery list that I have to purchase a new back-up ketchup for the pantry. What psychological make-up causes this compulsion, I don’t know.

Anyway, the inventory in our pantry has dwindled quite dramatically this week for the first time in—dare I say—years (there’s actually space for new SKUs!) because, as you may have read in previous posts, I was out of town last weekend and therefore couldn’t do the grocery shopping. So Eric and I have been cobbling together dinners based on what random ingredients we have left in our house. Monday night we had butternut squash and steamed spinach. Last night we had tortilla pizzas. And tonight I cooked with some of my pantry staples that I keep on hand for just such circumstances: spaghetti and canned clams.

While I boiled the spaghetti, I sautéed some sliced garlic in about a tablespoon of olive oil over medium-low heat for four minutes. I reserved the olive oil and garlic in a small pyrex ramekin to pour over the pasta when it was done.

In the same pan that I used to sauté the garlic, I added another tablespoon of olive oil, and when it was warm I tossed in some pieces of brocoli. I poured some water into the pan, which I covered, and I steamed the brocoli with some more sliced garlic for a few minutes.

When the spaghetti was done, I tossed it with the garlic olive oil and some additional olive oil. (I read recently that olive oil loses its salubrious properties when heated to high temperatures, which is why I reserved some unheated olive oil for drizzling over the cooked pasta.) I then seasoned the spaghetti with salt and pepper and poured it into a serving dish.  I added the canned clams and sprinkled some grated parmesan and romano cheese over the top.

YUM! It was quite satisfying.

What are your pantry staples?

Tonight’s Dinner: Tortilla Pizzas

You know you’re getting desperate when you start fashioning mini pizzas out of whole wheat tortillas, cans of diced tomatoes and cheddar ( or worse, “shaker”) cheese.

Alas, that’s what Eric and I had to cobble together for dinner tonight since I was away this past weekend and thus couldn’t go grocery shopping.  We had a head of Boston lettuce leftover from week three of our CSA (week four was this past weekend) so I made a side salad to go with the pizzas.  

It wasn’t a bad dinner. And of course, a humble dinner is better than NO dinner, which unfortunately is an all too common reality for more than a billion people all over the world. 

I’m not sure what we’ll have for dinner tomorrow night, but we’ll have to continue to be resourceful this week since I don’t plan to shop for groceries until this coming weekend.  Eric, who tries to eat low-carb, might just have to slurp spaghetti one night. At least we’re saving money on groceries during a week when cash is otherwise tight.