May 8, 2009
· Filed under Main Dish, Spring · Tagged bacon, eggs, feta, frittata, greens, leeks, rapini
Posted by Lisa
Leek, Bacon & Rapini Frittata
I regularly order a four pound tub of feta through Azure Standard, so I always have feta on hand. It’s great for throwing into omelets, pasta, salads, quiches and frittatas. There are so many uses for feta. Eggs are abundant this time of year as are greens, so quiches and frittatas just seem perfect.
I found a wonderful book at our local library called Family Meals by Maria Helm Sinskey. It’s a great compilation of recipes and tips for including your children in a tradition of local and seasonal eating. I adapted this frittata recipe from the book’s A Colorful Frittata recipe.
Leek, Bacon & Rapini Frittata
adapted from Family Meals by Maria Helm Sinskey
- 4 oz bacon, chopped
- 1 large or two smaller leeks, washed well and sliced thinly
- 1 bunch rapini, roughly chopped
- 5 mushrooms, finely chopped
- 8 large eggs
- sea salt
- freshly ground pepper
- 1 teaspoon dried oregano or marjoram
- 1/2 cup crumbled feta
Preheat oven to 400°.
Heat a cast iron over medium high heat. Add bacon and leeks. Sauté until bacon begins to brown and leeks are beginning to soften. Add rapini, mushrooms, 1/2 teaspoon salt, freshly ground pepper and oregano and cook another five minutes until rapini is wilted.
In a large bowl, whisk eggs and 1/2 teaspoon salt until blended.
When rapini is wilted, add egg mixture to the cast iron skillet. Distribute evenly in pan. Sprinkle feta over the top. Place cast iron skillet in oven and bake until the frittata is puffed and golden on top.
Remove from oven and serve warm. Running a thin metal spatula or knife around the edge of the skillet will help loosen the frittata and make serving easier.
April 29, 2009
· Filed under This and That · Tagged bacon, beans, collards, eggs, greens, kale, leeks, menu, pasta, pesto, rapini, salad, spinach, swiss chard
Posted by Sheila
Ok, things have been cooking pretty slowly for me and this blog. As my about info relates, we are not usually meal planners so can’t share a weekly meal plan. However things are heating up now that we are back to harvesting for the CSA. Now we begin to just harvest for ourselves on the same day, and either suggest recipes for that week that we have tried, or often find new ones that we then try that week. This will make it easier for me to serve up tasty blog posts to complement Lisa’s hard work here! The second ingredient that has been missing for me here has been taking decent pictures of the food we make. I have come to have a great appreciation for the well taken pictures on food blogs. Like Lisa mentioned to me, it is hard when everyone is ready to eat and you are trying to get a picture in, and then add in a dash of poor lighting in the kitchen and it just becomes a fiasco. So I have decided, photo or not, words can go a long way (pictures do help) with wetting your appetites! Here’s some of what we ate from our fields last week.
- Goat and Barley Soup with Leek Tops (cut leek tops into 1 inch pieces and used as their own veggie–these were soft and delicious by the time the soup was finished!)
- Salad Mix of baby lettuces, crisp baby Russian kale, blood red beet leaves, borage flowers, perpetual spinach, and wild sorrel tossed with nettle pesto, italian-style homemade vinaigrette, and coarsly chopped Oregon hazelnuts
- Braised Rack of Goat with Sauteed Rapini
- Pizza Night: Nettle Pesto w/ sheep’s Feta AND Carmelized Leeks and Rapini, w/ Parmesan and Olive Oil
- Coconut Red Beans and Rice w/ baby perpetual spinach leaf salad with oil, vinegar, feta
- Falafel and Chard Cakes (ours somewhere between these and these )
- Rice Noodles with with sautéed Kale, locally fished Tuna, and Buttery Leeks
Things we plan to try this week:
And lots of different salads:
- Baby Perpetual Spinach with warm dressing of some sort (maybe we will splurge for some bacon…our piggies had none) and poached egg.
- Baby Perpetual Spinach w/ balsamic vinegar/olive oil, walnuts, and Oregonzola (Rogue Creamery blue cheeses-yum!!)
- Ceasar-inspired Lettuce Salad with our Rogue D’Hiver lettuce (a Romaine type)
- And maybe this Butter Lettuce and Pumpkin Seed Salad with our Winter Density lettuce (a butter/romaine style)
Otherwise it might be more of our old stand-bys: kale and eggs in the morning, greens smoothies, collards and rice and buttery leeks and white beans, more slow cooked goat (it is the only meat in our freezer right now), and probably another rapini pizza on pizza night! Who knows, maybe this week a great picture will come out of a great meal and it will grace this table here!
April 28, 2009
· Filed under Main Dish · Tagged bacon, cheese, greens, leeks, meat, mushrooms, onions, pizza
Posted by Lisa
Bacon, Caramelized Leek, Rapini, Mushroom Pizza
Pizza is such a versatile dish. You can make it with meat or without or use up small bits of a variety of vegetables that you have sitting around, which is useful for stretching a vegetable or clearing out your refrigerator and will change seasonally. Pizza can seem intimidating, but really, it’s a dough topped with stuff. How hard is that? If you find a good dough recipe, you’re set. I’ve heard that having a pizza stone is handy, but even if you don’t own one (as I don’t) you can still make wonderful pizza. I’ve used regular baking sheets and a cast iron griddle and I find that a cast iron griddle makes for a nice golden and well done crust.
This week I used bacon (cooked), caramelized leeks from our CSA share, one bunch of kale rapini (chopped and lightly sautéd), sliced local mushrooms and grated mozzarella.
Easy Pizza Dough
from The Food Network
- 3 1/2 cups, unbleached all purpose flour
- 2 packages active dry yeast
- 1 teaspoon sea salt
- 1/2 teaspoon sugar
- 1 1/2 cups lukewarm water
- 1/2 teaspoon olive oil
In a mixing bowl fitted with a dough hook, place flour, yeast, salt and sugar. While mixer is running, gradually add water and knead on low speed until dough is firm and smooth, about 10 minutes.
Turn machine off. Pour oil down inside of bowl. Turn on low once more for 15 seconds to coat inside of bowl and all surfaces of dough with the oil. Cover bowl with plastic wrap. Let dough rise in warm spot until doubled in bulk, about 2 hours.
Preheat oven to 475 degrees F.
If using a pizza stone, place stone in oven on bottom rack while preheating. Punch dough down, cut in half*. Place half of the dough on generously floured work surface. By hand, form dough loosely into a ball and stretch into a circle. Using a floured rolling pin, roll dough into large circle until very thin. Don’t worry if your circle isn’t perfect and if you get a hole just pinch the edges back together.
To prevent dough from sticking to counter, turn over the dough and sprinkle with flour. Also, flour the counter top and rolling pin as needed. Sprinkle pizza peel or cookie sheet generously with cornmeal. Transfer dough to pizza peel or cookie sheet with no lip. Add toppings. Slide dough onto pizza stone or place cookie sheet with pizza on bottom rack.
Bake 10 to12 minutes or until golden. Roll out remaining dough and top with desired toppings or freeze in freezer bags.
*I always divide the dough into four pieces for smaller, individual pizzas. 1/4 of the dough rolls out to fit very nicely on a standard sized cast iron griddle.
March 21, 2009
· Filed under Main Dish, Spring, Winter · Tagged bacon, dried tomatoes, feta, garlic, greens, mushrooms, pasta, preserved foods, rapini
Posted by Lisa
Mediterranean Spaghetti with Spring Vegetables
Our family doesn’t eat as much pasta as we used to, but pasta is a quick go-to dish that is the perfect vehicle for odds and ends from the refrigerator. My daughters kept asking me the name of this dish, so pressed to name it I came up with Mediterranean Spaghetti with Spring Vegetables, which they declared too long of a name. I couldn’t come up with anything else. It is Mediterranean in flavor with feta, balsamic vinegar, copious amounts of garlic and herbed tomatoes that I dried last fall, but it also had green onions and rapini which are green and spring-y. The dish was fairly quick and complimented by all (except my youngest who is developing an aversion to many green vegetables). The richness of the pasta was offset by a turnip salad.
Beautiful Fresh Vegetables and Home Dried Tomatoes
Mediterranean Spaghetti with Spring Vegetables
- 1/2 lb bacon, chopped
- 8 cloves of garlic, minced
- 1/4 – 1/2 cup dried tomatoes, sliced or chopped into smaller pieces
- 3/4 lb sliced mushrooms
- 1 bunch of rapini (or other greens) chopped
- 2 green onions, sliced
- 2 teaspoons chopped fresh thyme (so easy to grow yourself)
- 2 tablespoons chopped parsley
- 3/4 cup crumbled feta
- 1/4 cup balsamic vinegar
- 1/2 teaspoon sea salt
- freshly ground pepper
- 1 lb spaghetti
Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil to cook your spaghetti.
You will want to have all your ingredients ready at this point, because the pasta comes together fairly quickly. As your water heats, start cooking the bacon in a large pan. After several minutes, add the garlic and dried tomatoes to the bacon. When the bacon is nearly brown, add the mushrooms to the pan.
This part takes a little coordination. You will want to add your rapini or other greens, green onions and thyme to the bacon and mushroom mixture when your pasta is about halfway cooked, because the greens require very little cooking and you don’t want them over done. When pasta is al dente, drain in a colander and add the pasta to the bacon and mushroom mixture in the large pan. Also add all of the remaining ingredients to the pan. Mix well with tongs to even distribute everything. If the pasta seems a little dry, add a drizzle of olive oil and/or a small amount of chicken or vegetable stock. Serve immediately.
February 12, 2009
· Filed under Autumn, Dish Type, Main Dish, Winter · Tagged bacon, baked beans, beans
Posted by Lisa
Beans are an inexpensive pantry staple. They are full of fiber and very filling and most people like them. My girls and I have been reading books from the Little House series for the past year or so and have wanted to make an authentic recipe from one of the books for awhile. I finally got around to trying the recipe for Baked Beans. I calculated that a whole pot, which was enough for a main dish meal for our family of two adults, one tween and two younger children to be less than $3.00. I was hoping that the dish would be tasty or at least edible, but we were all very surprised at the richness and depth of flavor in these beans. Humble, modest food, but so delicious and hearty. The bacon was almost buttery and the beans were so smoky and tender. This dish takes a long time to cook*, but it is very hands off, so it can be in your oven while you are cleaning your house, weeding your garden or browsing your blog roll.
Baked Beans
adapted from The Little House Cookbook
- Navy, pea or “little white” beans, 3 cups (I used navy beans)
- 1 tablespoon whey or lemon juice
- baking soda, 1 teaspoon
- salt pork or bacon, 1/4 to 1/2 pound (I used bacon)
- sea salt
- molasses, 1/4 cup
- optional: onions, cut into small chunks; additional molasses
The night before cooking, put sorted beans into a large pot or stainless steel bowl with whey or lemon juice, cover with filtered water.
Soaked beans, before simmering.
Next morning, change the water and bring to a simmer. Simmer for 5 minutes and skim foam off the top of the water. Stir in baking soda and watch it fizz. Continue to simmer. After about 40 minutes they should be tender.
Pour the cloudy yellowish liquid off of the tender beans and cover with 5 cups of fresh water and return to a simmer; add salt pork or bacon. Add salt to taste; I used about two teaspoons of sea salt. In 30 minutes this liquid will be ready to pour off.
Beans simmering with bacon
Drain liquid from beans and reserve. Grease an enameled cast iron dutch oven (this is what I used with excellent results, but you could probably use any type of dutch oven) with a couple pieces of the bacon. Put drained beans and bacon into greased dutch oven. If you are using onions, layer them in between the beans. Drizzle molasses on top of the beans and bacon, then add reserved bean liquid just to almost cover the beans.
Beans before baking
Put a lid on and bake for four hours at 250, remove the lid and bake for another four hours. Alternately you can bake for four hours at 350. In either case, add liquid if necessary to keep beans from drying out. You don’t want the surface to start drying out some until the last hour of baking.
Baked Beans
Serve with a small pitcher of molasses, if desired. Cornbread is an fantastic accompaniment.
*I started cooking the beans at about 8:30 in the morning and dinner was ready around 6:45pm.
