Shannon Phillips

Our box seemed light this week, to be honest. We got a thin bunch of chard, a bunch of small and skinny carrots, a bunch of radishes, a bunch of asparagus, one stalk of green garlic, two leeks, a bag of baby lettuces, and a bag of walnuts. I think I can use up everything but the asparagus and the nuts tonight, in a chard frittata and a big salad.

Tomorrow I guess Robin and I will have fish sticks, and for dinner we’ll roast the asparagus and serve it alongside a wild rice salad with celery and walnuts.

I think we’re doing more house-hunting this weekend so I don’t want to plan meals I won’t be around to cook. I guess the next two dinners will be “something with fish” and “something with pasta,” though. I’ll have to see what’s in at the fish counter and browse some recipes. I think the pasta should be whole wheat penne baked with ham, cheese, peas and egg; it’s been a while since I’ve made that and it’s tasty, and feels more virtuous than macaroni and cheese even though it hits a similar comfort-food spot.

Last week we ended up having orange-glazed chicken breasts with steamed zucchini one night, and then the next night I mixed up the leftovers with some brown rice and sauteed onions. Sam liked it a lot more than I thought he would! I think he likes chicken more than I do—I tend to think chicken is kind of boring. Maybe if I get a chance on Sunday I’ll roast a chicken, and make stock from the bones.

The highlight of last week’s dinners was certainly the agnello all’araba from The Silver Spoon cookbook—lamb cubes roasted with onions, honey, saffron and other spices. (I used honey that Sam’s dad harvests in his own backyard, from his own bees.) It wasn’t especially picturesque—just looked like brown lamb cubes in a setting of yellow onions—so I didn’t take a photo, but Sam raved about it and Sam is generally pretty taciturn about these things.

I did take a picture of the pie:
It wasn’t the most beautiful of pies (the strawberry juices overflowed the crust and made the oven smoke) but you can’t tell that when it’s cut up and plated, and it tasted great. Sweet-tart and flaky and yummy.

Sam liked the pie. But his highly approving reaction to the lamb made me think that maybe I should do like that one chick did with Julia Child, or that other chick did with Thomas Keller, and dedicate myself to the mastery of a certain cuisine via an iconic cookbook: in my case, Italian cuisine and the Silver Spoon cookbook.

And then I realized there’s over 2,000 recipes in The Silver Spoon, and it would take me about ten years.

And anyway, if the idea is to dedicate myself to a certain cuisine that will satisfy my husband’s hunger on some kind of a deep genetic level, then I should really be going for Arbëreshë recipes. Because Sam isn’t Italian, exactly: his family is Arbëreshë, Albanian by way of Italy. Trouble is, I don’t think there are any Arbëreshë cookbooks.

Maybe I should collect one. If you’re reading this, and you’re Arbëreshë, and you have an old family recipe, will you please think about sending it to me? If I put in online or even someday in a book, I promise I’ll credit you.

The other thing that happened last week: while I was at the farmer’s market buying things for Easter dinner, I saw a produce stand where they were selling stinging nettles. And I decided I had to try cooking with that shit! Once you boil them, see, they stop stinging. And they’re like a superfood, loaded with nutrients and antioxidants.

Unfortunately, my recipe for ravioli buried in stinging nettle broth wasn’t all that tasty. So no recipes or pictures on that one. Instead, feast your eyes on this:

Oh yeah. That’s spaghetti carbonara with real guanciale. What’s guanciale, you say? Why, guanciale is a cured pig’s cheek.

That sounds disgusting, you say? Oh no. Spaghetti carbonara is a big favorite of ours, but we generally make it with bacon. Bacon is, obviously, delicious, but authentic carbonara is apparently made with guanciale. I’d read this before. So when I walked out of the farmer’s market holding a bag of stinging nettles, and my eyes settled on a storefront emblazoned “Boccalone: Tasty Salty Pig Parts,” well. I had to check and see if they had any guanciale.

And they did. And it was delicious. Even better than bacon.

The other thing that I made last week, that was particularly good, was the false mahshi. It’s kind of an autumn recipe, but Sam said he liked it even better than borscht. (Even though I used sirloin tips instead of rib-eye like the recipe calls for.) With the beets and the red-dyed rice it was really pretty. I tried to take a picture, but the snapshot doesn’t really do it justice:

And I did cook the squid, and it was alright but not spectacular: I braised it in red wine and tomatoes and served it over spaghetti, but Sam and I both agreed that we’d rather have had pasta puttanesca. And Robin wouldn’t touch it.

Well. Anyway. Today in our veggie box we got a bag of baby lettuces, a bunch of asparagus, a bag of small potatoes, a bunch of chard, a bunch of radishes, several green garlic stems, two leeks, and a sweet bunch of thin, delicate new carrots.

Tonight we’re having creamy spring asparagus soup (I’ve already made it, and it’s tasty), with a salad of the lettuce, radishes, carrots, and green garlic dressing.

Tomorrow another veggie dinner: garlicky chard (using the last of the green garlic) and boiled potatoes with butter and dill. That’ll leave only one leek to deal with for the whole rest of the week.

I honestly don’t know what I’ll do with all the freedom; I think I’ll take each day as it comes. Stay tuned for more thrilling updates throughout the week!

Last week’s meal plan didn’t go so well; the pissaladière was a big hit as usual, but we had more leftovers from the pasta-with-greens-and-white-beans than I expected, and then for a couple evenings I was just disorganized with the shopping: so I didn’t make half the things I wanted to make. I did get all the veggies except the potatoes and the chard used up, though.

In this week’s box we got more of that Russian red kale (last week’s mystery veggie); a bag of mixed lettuce; a bunch of chard; a bunch of collard greens; a bunch of radishes; three slender leeks; two green garlic bulbs; a bunch of pencil asparagus; and a bag of fingerling potatoes.

Tonight we’re finally getting around to having that false mahshi (using both last week and this week’s chard, and I’ll probably substitute the leeks and the green garlic for one of the onions. I’m also using sirloin tips instead of rib-eye, because have you seen how much grass fed rib-eye costs?). Tomorrow Robin and I will have a salad (involving lettuce, radishes, and some left-over green goddess dressing) for lunch, and for dinner we’ll have garlic-roasted potatoes and pan-seared asparagus.

Friday lunch: leftover mahshi, if there is any. For dinner I want to try a recipe that came in the box, for sweet potatoes braised with apples and greens (I’ll use the kale and the collards).

Saturday will be about dying eggs, and prepping for Sunday night’s dinner. I don’t know that we’ll do much for Easter this year; Robin’s a bit young for a formal egg hunt, but we might hide some around the apartment. In some past years I’ve gone to the Easter service at our Unitarian church, but Sam’s not enthusiastic about it, and to be honest I don’t really even know how one goes about attending church with a toddler.

Anyway, we’re not having anybody over for dinner, but I still want a celebration-of-spring type meal. I’m thinking:

sorrel soup (recipe from the San Francisco Ferry Plaza Farmer’s Market Cookbook)
agnello all’araba, or “arabian lamb” (recipe from The Silver Spoon cookbook, a wedding gift from my sisters-in-law which I’ve been meaning to delve into more. The recipe basically involves lamb cubes roasted in a mixture of onions, honey, saffron, cumin, ginger, and stock, with almonds and olives and cilantro added at the end).
fava beans, boiled and buttered
strawberry rhubarb pie

I can make the pie and the soup on Saturday. And something quick and easy for us to actually eat on Saturday, like maybe pasta puttanesca.

Monday I’m sure we’ll have leftovers. And Tuesday, if the leftovers haven’t run out, maybe I’ll take another stab at cooking squid. You shall not escape me so easily, o cephalopods!

Last week’s dinners were pretty much all successful. The mushroom-barley soup is easy, fairly inexpensive, and good enough that we had it again last night; the Tuscan style garlic-rosemary pork roast (Cook’s Illustrated recipe) always comes out well; and to my great delight the pan-fried sand dabs (they didn’t have catfish) were fun both to cook and to eat. I’m definitely going to try to work more fish into our menus.

The prettiest thing I made was this asparagus and gruyere tart, from a Martha Stewart recipe:

Greedy little fingers not included in the recipe! The tart with salad made a nice meal, and I think it would also be elegant as the first course at a dinner party.

This week in our veggie box we got chard, collard greens, asparagus, lettuce, a bunch of green garlic, a bag of Yukon potatoes, and a great frondy bunch of something that I’m embarrassed to admit I have no idea what it might be. Mom! What is this?

Tonight I plan to make a salad with green goddess dressing (involving anchovies and the green garlic) and pissaladière (we like anchovies!). Tomorrow Robin and I will have the potatoes and the mystery greens for lunch: I have some salt pork in the fridge, and I’m working on the theory that any sort of dark leafy green is good when boiled with salt pork and dressed with a little cider vinegar. And for dinner, a Cook’s Illustrated recipe for “Whole Wheat Pasta with Collard Greens, Beans, Pancetta, and Garlic Bread Crumbs” that I’ve made before and liked.

Saturday night’s dinner needs to be quick and easy since I’m off with friends for the day; I’m thinking the asparagus, roasted, and a couple of steaks. Sunday night I want to try this recipe for “false mahshi” with chard, beets, rice and beef.

Having thus disposed of all the vegetables, I’ll be able to get creative on Monday and Tuesday nights. There’s a couple of recipes I’ve been eying: one for Rustic Farro Soup with Sausage and Mushrooms, the other for Braised Squid With Artichokes. Squid! I know! Look at me getting all adventurous with the marine life!

SFWeekly ran a really interesting story last week on ForageSF, the new service that offers CSA-like boxes filled with foods gathered from the wild. I think it’s a fascinating idea, but I won’t be signing up.

It’s not that I think foraging is too weird. As an ethnobotanist’s daughter, I grew up grazing on weeds. When my mom was here for a visit she reminded me of something I’d forgotten: the time I got in trouble at daycare for encouraging the other kids to eat Oxalis stricta, which I called sweet-and-sour, because it is. Both the leaves and the flowers are edible and tasty. I also remember going mushroom-hunting after rains with my mom, looking for white puffballs, and I remember her encouraging me to eat the ripe persimmons that had fallen to the sidewalk. She taught me which common berries are safe to eat (like sumac) and which are poisonous (like pokeberries), and which are okay to eat but simply don’t taste very good (like mulberries or false strawberries). I remember picking wild blackberries and wild strawberries for cobblers. Foraging is immensely fun.

But I wouldn’t eat something wild picked by someone I don’t personally know. Iso Rabins may really know his stuff. But I don’t know that he does, so I’m not going to eat the things he picks. Especially not mushrooms. You don’t fuck around with mushrooms.

And anyway, most of this stuff is immensely perishable. The point of foraging is to go out, scavenge, bring home your haul and eat it immediately, while the flavors are still strong and vibrant. Having a whole box of these greens at once would necessarily mean there was some stuff I couldn’t get to for days, and I’m pretty skeptical about how well it would last.
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And on top of all that, I don’t see the point in paying premium prices to get someone else to do the foraging for me. Part of the delight of making a dandelion salad out of weeds from the driveway is that you feel like Sacajawea, wise and expert in the ways of the land, a real woods-woman. If I paid forty bucks for a box of weeds I’d only feel like a sucker.

But in spite of that, I kind of hope ForageSF is a success. I think it’s good for us all to realize how many common and overlooked plants are actually totally edible, to be aware of the possibilities all around us. It’s certainly a nudge to me to dust off my old copy of The Dandelion Celebration, and a reminder that when Robin gets a little bit older, foraging is something I really want to share with him.

In the box: chard, lettuce, collard greens, carrots, leeks, three bulbs of fennel, a bunch of slim asparagus, two heads of cauliflower, and a bunch of rosemary.

Last week’s standout success, from my perspective, was a Whole Foods recipe for quinoa stew with salmon and tomatoes:

I have trouble with fish because I’d like to eat it more, what with all you hear about those omega fatty acids, but I can’t stand that briny, fishy taste that can often occur when you’re, you know, eating fish. Fried fish is generally safe and I adore sushi, and bagels with lox, but fish cooked any other way is often just repulsive to me. Still every few years I buy a cut of fish and take it home to cook, because it’s definitely my culinary last frontier, and I want to keep pushing the boundaries. Two years ago I bought a big salmon fillet and cooked it en croute with goat cheese and herbs: it sounded like a no-fail recipe but two bites in, there it was, the fishy taste. We didn’t finish it, a huge disappointment for an expensive and time-consuming dish.

This quinoa and salmon stew was this year’s foray into fish-land (or fish-waters, whatevs) and I’m delighted to tell you that the dish is lovely, bright and citrusy and not briny at all. The salmon was on sale so it worked out to a reasonable price too. Robin demonstrated his opinion of fish by picking out all the biggest salmon chunks and eating them first! So, with this success under my belt I’ll be looking for more chances to work fish into my menus.

Tonight though I think we’ll start on the cauliflowers, in an Indian-style curry with chickpeas: since Delicious Living came through for me on the salmon stew, I’m going with this recipe.

Tomorrow for lunch Robin and I will have the other cauliflower, and the collard greens. For dinner, Panko-Crusted Catfish with Garlic Chard…unless they don’t have catfish at the fish counter. As noted, I’m not a regular there and I don’t have much insight into how fish seasons move. Maybe I’ll ask if there’s something else that can substitute.

Friday: Mushroom-barley soup (I intend to add leeks too) and salad. Saturday: an asparagus tart along the lines of what my fellow csa’er describes here (the chard version looks awesome too, doesn’t it?) And for our Sunday-night roast we’ll do garlic-rosemary pork loin, with fennel. That’ll provide leftovers for at least one night; if I need to improvise something on Tuesday, I will.

Spring is really here in San Francisco: I can tell not only from the beautiful balmy day we had today, but from the fact that this week’s veggie box contained no chard and no kale! Instead we got a big bunch of spearmint, pea shoots, a little radicchio head, a small bulb of fennel, a bag of spinach, two bundles of leeks, and two huge bunches of carrots. I cooked one whole bunch of carrots last night in a mushroom-barley soup; I used the cooking broth left over from boiling our corned beef on St. Paddy’s Day, and it turned out really nicely. I was proud of myself since I’m generally such a rigid cook, hewing tightly to recipes; that soup was entirely improvised and it came out tasty.

Tonight we’re eating spinach salad with bacon and hard-boiled eggs; tomorrow night I think we’ll have the pea shoots and radicchio in another salad, with roasted fennel and carrots alongside. For Saturday and Sunday I just don’t know; we might be going to see more houses on those days, or we might not. We’ve made a formal offer on the bungalow I mentioned in my last post. There’s another offer already in for the property, so we don’t know if we’ll actually get it, and our realtor thinks it’s wise to have a second-choice property picked out. But, you know, we really like that one. We’ve gone back a couple of times just to wander around the neighborhood and we keep finding more to like: a park! a library! a coffee shop that makes beignets! It’s on High Street so in my head it’s “High House,” or sometimes “High Garden House” because the backyard slopes up steeply and I have dreams of a terraced garden. I also think “The House on High Street” sounds like a good title for a novel, although the goings-on in said novel would probably be sordid!

I truly believe that house is an excellent value. When it was last sold, two years ago, a bunch of inspections were done, which we’ve been able to see. The property is basically in solid shape. It has some issues that would be true of any house that age; the most serious is that earthquake retrofitting was never done, and some work would be needed to bring it up to modern standards. We’ve structured our offer so that some money would be set aside to complete that work. I’m a little worried that the bank might balk at that, and we might have to reconfigure the offer in order to get the loan finalized. Anyway, there’s some stress and uncertainty involved, but I guess there always is in these kinds of situations.

I’m still sort of amazed that a house valued at $500,000 two years ago is now selling for $150,000. It’s a short sale, which I don’t fully understand, but I think that’s better karma than a foreclosure: nobody is getting kicked out of the house. The bank has instead agreed to let the current owners sell for less (probably much less) than they currently owe on the mortgage; as far as I understand, it’s a way for them to walk away from an overpriced loan without damage to their credit, and a way for the bank to recoup some money on a mortgage that would otherwise likely default. Short sales are pretty complicated, but because there is this more-or-less amicable agreement between the sellers and the buyers, these houses generally don’t get trashed the way foreclosures often do.

I’m rambling. I’m nervous. I don’t know what I’m going to do with my spearmint. Mom, can you tell me exactly how you used to make mint sun tea? What kind of tea, and how much of it, and how long do you let it steep in the sun? And how much of the spearmint should I put in?

In the box: kale, collard greens, chard, spinach, fennel, pea shoots, carrots, cauliflower, endive.

Nanita, Marqueño, and my aunt Judy are all here for a visit, which has been very lucky as they’ve helped a lot with the house-hunting. We actually saw a place yesterday that we’re really interested in—a little Craftsman bungalow with lots of interior woodwork and built-ins, in a neighborhood we like (Jefferson, within walking distance of both the Fruitvale and Laurel shopping districts…at least it’s walking distance if you’re like me and don’t mind walking twenty or thirty minutes). Nicely laid out even though it’s small (1,000 square feet, three bedrooms, a lovely wood-paneled dining room). A small but perfectly adequate back yard. It has a yucky backyard pool that’s been boarded over and would basically have to come out, and it’s on a fairly busy street, but Sam and I don’t mind that and we both think the house itself is just a gem. It sold for $500,000 just two years ago; now they’re asking $150,000. The housing market, it is a crazy thing.

Oh, I was supposed to plan stuff for dinner. What with the whirlwind of house-hunting I haven’t been doing much cooking; we ate out the past two nights and I don’t think I’m cooking tonight either. But all these vegetables have to get eaten, so tomorrow I’ll plan on making that “winter pesto” with the kale and spinach, and some sort of salad with the pea shoots and endive. Probably I’ll saute the fennel and add it to the salad.

Chard and roasted cauliflower could make a nice light lunch. That leaves only carrots and collard greens to deal with: I could buy some pork chops and cook them up with the greens, and maybe roast the carrots too. Okay, done! My head is too full of bungalow to plan out any farther than that.

In the box: pea shoots, kale, collard greens, chard, fennel, spinach, radicchio, leeks, carrots, beets, and three endives—that’s new. Luckily the recipes tucked in the box include one for endive & radicchio salad.

Tonight I think we’ll do a repeat of that winter pesto with kale and spinach. I was a little skeptical but it came out really well last time. I think it’s the cheese: that ricotta salata stuff is really good! It’s nothing like the soft ricotta I was more familiar with; it’s more like feta in texture, but with a lovely mild taste. Anyway the recipe calls for a whopping half pound of it. To balance out all that cheese, I use the whole bunch of kale as well as the whole bag of spinach (instead of the 1/2 bunch they call for), so I end up with a lot of pesto, enough to sauce a full pound of pasta. Whole wheat pasta stands up well to the flavor of the greens.

Tomorrow night I want to try this recipe for pea shoot and smoked bacon soup, except I’ll use a leek instead of the onion. And I’ll also make a big salad with roasted beets and sauteed fennel. Robin and I can have a smaller salad for lunch from the endives and radicchio.

Friday: This “medley of greens with potatoes and leeks” looks appealing; it would use the beet greens and the remaining leeks as well as the chard. I will probably buy some sausages to serve with it. Robin and I will have the collard greens for lunch.

Saturday I’m out with friends, so dinner will be leftovers or delivery; Sunday night I’ll make a pot roast with parsnips and carrots. Generally these big roasts provide leftovers for at least a day and often two days, so I won’t plan out any farther than that…

This week’s veggies: collard greens, kale, pea shoots, chard, two bulbs of fennel, bok choy, spinach, radicchio, some very lovely carrots, a butternut squash, and an acorn squash.

Tonight we’re having Thai food delivered: I’ve been feeling sluggish all day and I don’t want to cook. But I like the looks of the squash. I think tomorrow I’ll stuff the acorn squash with quinoa: this recipe looks like what I’m envisioning. I’ll make a salad out of the pea shoots and radicchio to go with it.

Friday night the kale, carrots, and the butternut squash can go into a minestrone-type soup: there’s a recipe in Alice Waters’ The Art of Simple Food. Robin and I will probably have the bok choy for lunch.

Saturday night I think we might go out to eat: Pops and Mo gave us a gift certificate to one of our favorite restaurants, so we could have a nice meal out as a family.

Sunday night: A garlic-rosemary roast pork loin roasted with fennel, and garlicky chard on the side. Monday we’ll have leftover pork with the collard greens. And there will most likely be enough pork for sandwiches on Tuesday night too, maybe with a spinach salad.