Shannon Phillips

Look what I found on my hard drive: a picture of a dinner I must have made months ago.

I remember it being yummy as well as pretty. The recipe is from the San Francisco Ferry Plaza Farmer’s Market Cookbook, which I use a lot, because it’s structured around the kind of local ingredients that we tend to get in our box. The salmon cakes involved a pound of skinned, deboned salmon, coarsely chopped and mixed with half a cup of chopped fresh cilantro, a fourth of a cup of scallions, a fourth of a cup of fresh bread crumbs, two tablespoons of dijon mustard, and a bit of salt and pepper, patted into shape and fried in a skillet over medium heat with a little bit of olive oil, about five minutes a side. The relish is just onion, corn kernels, tomatoes, and fresh basil, sauteed for a few minutes to soften the onion and corn. If you can get responsibly sourced salmon for a reasonable price, it makes a nice presentation without too much work.

This week we got a bunch of chard, a very small head of red leaf lettuce, a bag of bok choy, a pint of figs, a bunch of radishes, three sweet peppers, three beets, six small tomatoes (assorted kinds), six Gala apples, and a very big squash. The flier in the box says it’s a Kabocha squash, but I don’t think it is: it’s orange and diamond-shaped, and all the pictures of Kabocha squash that I can find are round and dark green. Mom, do you know what kind of squash this is?

Anyway, here’s the meal plan. Last night we had chard soufflé; tonight we’re having arroz con pollo with the tomatoes and peppers. My grandmother was kind enough to send a long a recipe that used to be her mother’s; I’ll post it after I’ve had the chance to try it out.

Friday I’ll roast the squash and make it into soup. I’ll probably make a salad to go alongside. Saturday we’ll have borscht.

There’s always a ton of leftovers from the recipe I use for borscht, so I’m not sure we’ll need much more food to last us through the week, but I did notice that they had local grass-fed “lamb” at the meat counter at Whole Foods. I put lamb in quotes because I think this time of year it must actually be mutton? For some reason in the U.S. they refuse to distinguish between lamb and mutton. Anyway, amusingly enough, my “bible of Italian cooking,” the Silver Spoon cookbook, includes a recipe for English Mutton Chops that seems easy and quick (brush ’em with butter and put ’em under the broiler? Okay!). So on Sunday I will be a Californian using an Italian recipe for English mutton chops. And then I think we’ll have enough leftovers for Monday and Tuesday; if not, some kind of quick pasta is always our friend.

This week in our veggie box we got a pint of figs, a big bag of small red grapes, a pint of cherry tomatoes, three yellow summer squash and two very leetle zucchinis, four medium-sized heirloom tomatoes, four nectarines, a whole bunch of red gypsy peppers, and also what I think are a few smaller chili peppers—although it’s hard to be entirely sure: they could just be very small sweet peppers.

I haven’t made one of these posts in a few weeks, but the box content has been mostly the same, except that we’ve been getting eggplant for the past several weeks, and sometimes pears instead of the figs or peaches. I’ve mostly been making ratatouille or caponata, and one week I made a beautiful vegetable torta—which I took a picture of—but I lost it along with my camera. Instead you can see the lovely whole wheat bread I made to go with the caponata a few weeks ago (I got the picture off my camera before I lost it):

Tonight we’re having halibut baked in foil with squash, zucchini and tomatoes; they had locally-fished halibut at the fish counter, so I got it even though it was more expensive than I usually buy. You’d think that living on the coast we’d get plenty of fresh local fish, but the environmental regulations are so strict around here that you can almost never get local fish. I think it’s short-sighted: shipping our fish in from halfway around the world has a deleterious effect on the global environment, after all. So, I sprang for the local halibut just to be supportive.

Tomorrow I’ll make pasta with cherry tomatoes, arugula, and goat cheese; Friday, I’ll put all of the peppers (sweet or hot as they may be) into a beef chili. I might make cornbread to go alongside. And that will take care of the veggies, so I’m not going to plan out any further than that.

As for the fruit, the nectarines and grapes will be eaten raw, but I found a nice recipe for fresh fig bars that I think I’ll use again this week. For that recipe I get to use the honey that Sam’s father harvests from his own backyard bees! It’s wonderful, wonderful stuff, and Pappy always seems to have another big mason jar full of it waiting for us whenever we run out. You might say that I married into honey. Hee hee hee.

Today’s box held a bag of peaches, a bag of nectarines, a pint of cherry tomatoes, a bunch of purple basil, two cucumbers, five big green-and-yellow pattypan squashes, two beets, two skinny heads of broccoli, two bunches of carrots, lots of little red sweet peppers, and a scant handful of okra. I truly hope that these five lonely okra pods are the trickle that heralds the deluge—I love okra, always have, it’s the Southern in me.

Tonight we’re having roast beef, with a side of squashes and okra sauteed with butter and salt. Tomorrow I need to finish up a pot of red beans and rice (I ended up making that last week instead of paella), so we’ll have that, maybe with cornbread. I have a zoo date with Wendy so I want to have dinner squared away anyway!

But I don’t want to let those tomatoes sit for too long, so Friday we’ll do a sort of villager’s salad with the tomatoes, cucumbers, basil, and maybe the peppers, roasted? I don’t know, I’ll have to research and decide on a specific recipe. I might get some sausages to make it a heartier meal.

Saturday I have plans with friends, so it’s probably delivery for dinner; Sunday we’ll have a chicken roasted with carrots and beets, and I’ll make chicken stock from what’s left of the carcass. If I get ambitious I’ll make a nectarine and blackberry crisp…but who am I kidding, Robin’s not going to let the nectarines last till Sunday.

Monday I might try out that buttermilk mac and cheese I was thinking about? We’ll see. Often these meal plans seem to go wonky towards the end of the week.

I’m going to save the broccoli for sticking into Sam’s bento. Wendy made the excellent suggestion that putting in crunchy vegetables (and maybe some dip) is a good way to fill up the bowls without including too much food. Sam isn’t going to be delighted with this plan, but he’s good about eating what’s set in front of him, and don’t raw vegetables cure cancer or something? I’ll make sure to include cookies on the crudité days, so he doesn’t feel like I’m sending him off with rabbit feed.

Oh, and Mom wanted the recipe for the tabouleh I posted a picture of the other day: so here it is.

Toss in a large bowl: 1/2 cup of medium-grind bulgur; the juice of two lemons; 1/3 cup of olive oil; a half teaspoon of salt; a pinch of cayenne pepper; a huge bunch of parsley (or two smaller ones) all chopped up; a couple of nice tomatoes (chopped); some fresh mint if you have it, or a heaping teaspoon of dried mint if you don’t (use 2-3 times as much fresh mint, and chop it up, or chiffonade it if you feel fancy); and a diced cucumber. These ingredients are fairly elastic; you can put in a cuke or a ‘mater more or less and it will come out about the same. You can put in scallions or minced red onion if you want (I think I did, that day). You can guesstimate the bulgur if you want. It’s really a forgiving recipe, and I say this as someone who generally measures the water when I boil pasta.

Let the bowl sit on the counter until the bulgur is softened and fluffy, about an hour. Then put it in the fridge and let it sit for another hour. Taste it and add salt and pepper, or even more lemon juice and/or oil, if you want. It should be very bright and tangy, and the vegetable to grain ratio should be about two to one.

I’m so glad summer is here! In our box today we got a pint of strawberries, a bag of apricots, four spring onions, a bag of lettuce, a bunch of carrots, a bunch of radishes, a bundle of fresh rosemary, and two little paper bags—one filled with beautiful heirloom tomatoes, the other with yellow gypsy peppers.

I wanted to work with those tomatoes and peppers immediately, so I made panzanella—Italian bread salad with tomatoes and other veggies. Here’s the recipe, adapted from The San Francisco Ferry Plaza Farmers’ Market Cookbook.

Press two or three cloves of garlic through a garlic press and into a small bowl. Add 1/4 cup red wine vinegar, a pinch of salt and several grinds of pepper, and mix it all up with a fork. Set aside.

Cut a loaf of country bread (we used whole wheat and it was delicious) into inch-wide slices. Toast or grill the bread slices, and when they are cool enough to handle, tear them into bite-size pieces and put them in a large salad bowl. Alternately, if you have slightly stale bread or really good croutons, you can use that instead.

While the bread is toasting, cut your tomatoes—two or three pounds of lovely, lovely tomatoes—into bite-size chunks and put them in the same bowl with the bread.

Add whatever you have to hand. A cucumber is good. If you have sweet peppers you can chop them up and throw them in. Anchovies or capers are good (six to eight anchovy fillets, minced, and/or 1/3 cup capers). As Wikipedia says: “Sometimes thought of as a ‘leftover salad,’ additional panzanella ingredients vary widely, and include lettuce, white wine, capers, anchovies, celery, carrots, red wine, red onion, cucumber, tuna, parsley, boiled eggs, mint, bell peppers, lemon juice, and garlic.” So, you know, you can put in any or all of that. I used the peppers, cucumber, and anchovies.

Whisk 1/2 cup of olive oil into the vinegar and garlic mixture until you have a vinaigrette. Pour half of your vinaigrette over the tomatoes, bread, and other ingredients; give them a good toss, then pour the rest of the vinaigrette in and toss again.

Pick out a tomato and a chunk of bread and taste them. If the panzanella needs more salt and/or pepper, add that now. Take a bunch of basil (a couple dozen leaves) and scatter them over the panzanella. Give it one more toss and it’s ready to eat. (If you make the panzanella ahead of time, the bread will soak up the dressing, and you may need to add a bit more olive oil before serving.)

Ours looked like this, and it tasted like summer through and through:

For dessert we’re having a fruit salad of strawberries, blueberries (on sale this week at Whole Foods), and apricot slices. On a long lovely evening like this we can only be grateful for our good fortune.

This week’s box held snap peas, two different kinds of lettuce, a bulb of green garlic, four spring onions, a bunch of wee little carrots, a bunch of pencil asparagus, a box of strawberries (yay again!), and another bag of walnuts, which I am perfectly happy to add to the collection in the pantry.

They had catfish at the fish counter today, so tonight I’m going to do that panko-crusted catfish with garlic chard, and strawberry shortcake for dessert. Tomorrow we’ll have roasted asparagus and the rest of the veggies (except the onions) in a big salad.

I’ll put the onions in a big pot of red bean chili Friday night and make some cornbread to go with it. Saturday we may or may not be visiting houses so I need dinner to be quick and easy: some kind of pasta would be good. The Cook’s Illustrated recipe for orrechiette with broccoli rabe and sausage is a favorite.

Sunday is Mother’s Day so I’m not cooking! But Monday I’ll make beef enchiladas. At some point during the week I also want to try out this recipe for bulgur salad with kale, salami and olives; I’ll probably make it for Robin’s and my lunches.

And I think we’ll keep Tuesday as Leftovers Appreciation Night.

I don’t have a picture to show of this because the entire contents of the baking dish were gobbled up pretty much as soon as it came out of the oven. I thought I’d post the recipe because it’s one of the few I have that’s really mine—it’s adapted from a recipe for baked macaroni & cheese that I found online somewhere, but my methods have evolved a lot over the years that I’ve been making this.

This is obviously a high-fat dish. You could try using low-fat cheese and skim milk, but I wouldn’t expect it to taste very good. Instead I just like to think of this as an indulgence, something I don’t make very often but fully enjoy when I do.

You need:
Pasta. Not a whole pound of it—about 12 ounces. I use whole wheat penne because I can never find whole wheat macaroni. You could certainly use regular macaroni if you aren’t on a whole-grain kick like me. Or you could use shells or whatever. I think the penne works well though, and I find the Whole Foods whole wheat pasta to be really very tasty.
Cheese. Definitely a base of cheddar, but you can also add other kinds if you want. A big spoonful of sour cream makes a nice touch too. You want about two and half cups of grated cheese (including the sour cream if you’re using it). I generally just buy a good-sized hunk of cheddar and use it all.
One egg.
Two cups of milk. I was thinking last night that I’d like to try using buttermilk next time I make this. It might make things tangy and nice.
A small onion, or half of a big one, chopped up.
About 3/4 cup of frozen peas.
Some chopped ham. I go to the deli counter and ask them to give me one quarter-inch slice of whatever sort of ham looks nicest. Then I cut it up into quarter-inch cubes. If I were going to make a vegetarian version I’d probably just leave the ham out. I mean you could try baked tofu or something, but I don’t know that it would get you much. Maybe you could use another veggie, like cauliflower.
half a teaspoon of dry ground mustard. I will probably leave this out when I try making it with buttermilk.
salt and pepper

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees. Set a big pot of water on the stove to boil. Grease a large baking dish. When the water is boiling, add your pasta and a tablespoon of salt. Stir it up and let it boil, stirring frequently, for 7-8 minutes, until it’s about half cooked.

Meanwhile whisk your egg and milk together. Add the mustard, about a quarter teaspoon of salt, and several grindings of pepper. Stir it up. Add the cheese too and stir it in.

Add some olive oil to a skillet, heat it up, and sauté the onions until translucent and just starting to brown.

When the pasta is half-cooked, drain it and return it to the pot. Pour the milk and cheese mixture over the pasta and stir it together. Add the onions, ham, and peas. Turn out the whole mixture into the baking dish. Try and get most of the pasta submerged in the liquid. Some of it will stick out and that’s okay.

Bake it for about half an hour, until the pasta’s fully cooked and the cheese on top is starting to brown. Let it cool for a few minutes before serving.

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!

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.

The goulash we had the other day was really nice. It is, incidentally, gluten-free. The recipe is from America’s Best Lost Recipes, a really excellent cookbook that collects “heirloom” recipes from families across America. Because every recipe has a story behind it, the cookbook is as much fun to read as it is to cook from. Székely Goulash, for instance, apparently “gets its name from the Székely Hungarians, an ethnic minority group in Romania whose name, Szekler, means frontier guard. They guarded the eastern flank of Hungary, which was prone to invasion because of its geographic position in Europe as a crossroads.”

The goulash takes a long time to cook but it isn’t really much trouble. You need 2 pounds of boneless pork loin, cut into 1-inch pieces, patted dry with paper towels and seasoned with salt and pepper. Heat 2 tablespoons of butter and 1 tablespoon of vegetable oil in a Dutch oven over medium-high heat, until the foaming subsides, and then brown the pork on all sides (you’ll have to do it two batches or it will just steam rather than browning properly). This is the most time-consuming step. Incidentally, I used to cut corners when browning meat until I read about the Maillard reaction and how important it is in unlocking the flavor of meat. Now I take the time to brown meat properly. This would probably count as my second substantial improvement as a cook (the first came when I started using home-made chicken broth instead of the storebought stuff).

Anyway, while the pork is browning, chop up two large onions (I used leeks because that’s what we had) and mince a couple of garlic cloves (or get them ready to be put through a garlic press, which is what I always do, as it yields a more intense garlic flavor). Once the pork is browned, transfer it to a plate and pour off all but 1 tablespoon of fat from the pot. Cook the onions until soft, add the garlic along with 2 tablespoons of paprika and stir it around until you can really smell it, about 30 seconds. The recipe specifies to use “sweet, not hot” paprika, but the stuff that is sold in the supermarket simply as paprika will do just fine.

Add the pork back to the pot and stir in one and a half cups of chicken broth, a tablespoon of chopped fresh dill, a teaspoon of salt, 1/2 teaspoon of pepper, and bring it all to a simmer. Also, turn your oven on to 300 degrees. When the broth is simmering, cover the Dutch oven and transfer the pot to the oven, where you will let it cook for an hour and a half.

After its time in the oven the meat should be just about tender. Pull the stew out and stir in 2 pounds of sauerkraut, drained and rinsed. You want the fresh stuff (from the deli or a vacuum-sealed package) if you can get it. Also stir in 2 teaspoons of sugar. Then put it back in the oven for another 45 minutes. At this point the pork should be really tender, and if it isn’t, keep cooking it. When it’s nice and tender take the stew out of the oven and stir in 2 cups of sour cream. Serve it with extra chopped fresh dill, and if you want, spätzle, boiled potatoes, or hot buttered egg noodles. We ate it plain and were very happy with it that way.

Here is a bonus picture of Robin with a little bit of goulash left on his face and collar:

I thought this vegetarian soup was pretty “meh” when I made it last night, but the leftovers today were delicious. The recipe came tucked in our veggie box, with attribution to Cheryl Quantz of San Mateo. I thought I’d post it here for my own future reference, and for anybody who might be interested in a healthy, hearty, and frugal soup (kale is generally $1.99 a bunch at Whole Foods, probably cheaper elsewhere). Cheryl notes, “If possible let the soup sit for an hour or so before serving to allow the flavors to further develop,” but I think it needs longer than that. Overnight is best.

This picture is misleading; we were down to the last dregs of soup by the time I thought to snap a photo, and Robin and I had already slurped out all the kale. So imagine this thickened by lots more greens.

Cheryl’s recipe also says, “The ingredients of this soup supply plenty of flavor, so use water to prepare a simple stock by simmering the stems of the kale.” That’s exactly what I did: I cut up an onion and simmered it along with the kale stems for an hour. I have no doubt that real home-made chicken stock would improve the soup—it improves everything—but that would detract some from the frugality (as well as rendering the soup non-vegetarian, for those of you who swing that way). Anyway, the improvised stock does work.

I think next time I might cut up a little bit of kielbasa and toss it in.

Kale and Potato Soup with Red Chili

1 bunch kale
3 tablespoons virgin olive oil
1 bunch leeks, washed and chopped (the original recipe calls for “1 medium red or yellow onion” but I used a bunch of leeks instead, and I recommend it: potato-leek soup is a classic combo for a reason)
6 cloves of garlic, peeled and sliced (I was down to the ends of a head of garlic, so I only had four cloves, and I don’t recommend it. Use all six.)
1 small dried red chili, seeded and chopped, or 1/2 tsp chili flakes (I used the chili; I was worried that it would add too much heat but actually there was no appreciable heat. But chilis, of course, vary.)
1 bay leaf
1 tsp salt
1 lb potatoes, scrubbed and chopped into bite-size pieces (I used Yukon Gold because that’s what I had, but red potatoes would be nice too)
2 tsp nutritional yeast (the recipe notes that this is optional; I actually did buy and add the nutritional yeast, which is apparently different from regular yeast, but I’m not sure it did much for the soup. Oh, wait, I have Google—I can go see what nutritional yeast is supposed to do. Hmm. It’s supposed to add vitamins and a flavor similar to parmesan cheese.)
Interestingly, I also threw in a couple of parmesan cheese rinds, because I’ve been saving them and they’re supposed to be good in soups. I think if you’re not using “real” stock, and you don’t need your soup to be vegan, this is a good idea.
7 cups stock
Pepper
Crème fraîche or sour cream (optional, and I didn’t use it. It didn’t seem like the kind of soup that would be particularly good with sour cream.)

Tear the kale leaves off the stems and, if you want, make a simple stock with the stems. Tear the greens into bite-sized pieces, wash them, and set them aside.

Heat the olive oil in a soup pot over medium-high heat; add the leeks, garlic, chili, bay leaf, and salt, and saute until the leeks are softened but not soggy, 3 or 4 minutes. Add the potatoes and the yeast (if using), plus a cup of the stock. Stir together, cover, and simmer for 5 minutes.

Add the kale, stir, cover, and steam until it is wilted (stirring occasionally). Pour in the rest of the stock and add a generous grinding of pepper, plus the parmesan rind if you’re using that. (This is where I’d throw in the kielbasa, too.) Put the heat on high and bring to a boil, then turn heat to medium-low or low as necessary to keep it at a simmer. Cook until potatoes are soft.

Use the back of a wooden spoon to break up the potatoes by pressing them against the sides of the pot. This will make a unifying background for the other flavors. Taste and adjust for salt and pepper.

Let the soup sit at least an hour and preferably overnight. Serve hot, with a spoonful of crème fraîche or sour cream if you are a braver woman than I.