6 posts tagged “grilling”

This meal didn't actually use anything from the CSA, but that's ok, because it was so darn good! Friday and Saturday, there was entirely too much BBQ stuff on Food Network making us hungry, and Seattle has a lack of "good" BBQ joints, so Leah decided to "make her own damn ribs!"  She got recipes and tips from amazingribs.com and she spent parts of Saturday and Sunday making the ribs. She used the Memphis Dust rub for overnight and a Lexington Dip for the sauce. It was a perfectly balanced sauce of spicy, sweet and vinegary. The ribs themselves took about 5 hours to cook in the oven, basting every 30 minutes. While they were cooking, I spent the day cleaning off the deck so we could eat outside and converting the old rusted-out gas grill to a charcoal grill and she made potato salad. It turned out so good, we are planning to try some more recipes soon!

On Sunday, we picked up some King salmon at the farmer's market, so we used some of the leftover Memphis Dust rub on it and grilled it with some CSA zucchini. Leah made a mash from some CSA potatoes and about half a head of cauliflower, with a little cream cheese in it, since we were inexplicably out of butter! The salmon turned out perfect! The seasonings from the rub wasn't overpowering at all, it was just the right amount and sweet and salty to go with the fish.

Ah green beans, we can never get enough of them! I am sure someday they will become like broccoli to me (which I am just tired of eating for the most part), but for now, I still love em and order them in the CSA every week. My favorite way to prepare them is to toss them with olive oil and S&P and garlic, roast them in the oven on really high heat on a pre-heated pan for about 15 mins, so they get browned on both sides at the same time, then squeeze lemon juice over them at the end. It's super easy and so delicious. This time, Leah added a little hot pepper flakes, to make it more like szechuan green beans, since she made another chinese dish: white peppered pork slices.

We got tomatillos in our basket last week, so of course we had to make another easy sauce. First, boil 6-8 tomatillos, 1 jalapeno, 3-4 garlic cloves and a small onion. Remove the seeds from the jalapeno (leave a few if you like it spicier) and rough chop the tomatillos. Blend them all together with a little bit of the cooking water, cumin, salt, pepper, lime juice, a whole bunch of cilantro and an avocado. The avocado cuts a bit of the spiciness and adds some creaminess. We cooked the shrimp in the sauce and served with tortillas, rice, beans and avocados. Leah aslo made a dill sour cream sauce that was great too.

Grilling is the best! I love it, it even makes summer squash somewhat appetizing! There's nothing fancy here, just grilled the steaks and the squash with simple seasonings and roasted the green beans in the oven with oil, S&P and lemon and made a quickie salad from the mizuna and HUGE head of butter lettuce, tossed with a vinaigrette and some cherry tomatoes. The butter lettuce has made 3 salads so far!

What can I say? We love to grill, it's so easy and everything tastes great. We made another pizza with some CSA veggies (squash, tomatoes) and added some roasted red peppers, mushrooms and chicken sausage from Trader Joes. Note to self though: let the coals burn down a bit more next time so the crust doesn't cook so fast!

Now that we're back from vacation, we can resume our CSA Challenge! We missed 2 full weeks of fresh veggies, so I was happy to go pick up our basket this week. This week we got fava beans, flashy trout's back lettuce, mizuna, swiss chard, spring walla walla onions, baby red lasoda potatoes, yellowstone carrots and chioggia beets.

For dinner, we made a spice rub for a couple of pork loin chops that we had cut from a full pork loin roast and grilled them. It was much cheaper to have pork chops this way: less than $5 for the whole roast, which makes about six 1-inch thick pork chops, as opposed to $5 for only 2 chops that are pre-packaged. We had some leftover green beans from last week that were starting to get a little limp, so we decided to roast those with some of the baby potatoes and yellowstone carrots from the CSA. We just tossed them in a little oil, salt and pepper and roasted them for about 30 mins at about 425. We timed it so that when we started the charcoal for the grill, we put the veggies in the oven so the meat and veggies were done at the same time. We finished them both with a lime and garlic butter, which was fantastic, especially on the potatoes!

For dessert, Leah grilled some apricots and then simmered them in a syrup made from balsamic vinegar and honey. She served it over vanilla ice cream and it was one of the best desserts I have eaten in a long time! The sweet and tart balanced each other perfectly and the warm sauce and fruit made the ice cream melty and creamy and just perfect.

Leah did all the work for this meal, which turned out great! She made a salad of sauteed swiss chard and chiogga beets, topped with feta cheese, a few sliced turnips and a vinaigrette with oregano and parsley from the garden. It was awesome!

She also grilled burgers (made from mini-cattle ground beef from the farmer's market again) and sauteed the spring walla walla onions from the CSA basket. Everything turned out so good! I toasted the buns on the grill and managed not to burn them, so that was like a bonus :)

We had a salad planned for Sunday night's dinner because we needed to use up some lettuce and veggies from the previous week and also knew we would be getting more lettuce and greens this week. So, Leah made a chimichurri marinade for the gulf prawns, avocados and romaine hearts, all of which she grilled. I tossed romaine, mizuna and  flashy trout's back lettuce (the speckled one, from last week's CSA) with a citrus vinaigrette as the salad base. We layered some tomatoes, Korean cucumber, grilled avocado and grilled gulf prawns on top of the lettuces. We also added a few of the pickled turnips that we made the other day. Those turned out nice, kind of sweet and spicy. The trout's back was similar to romaine, but a little more earthy and delicate. The mizuna was very nice and tasted like a really mild sorrel, without the sourness. The mix of the three lettuces, with one being grilled, made for a surprisingly good salad blend!

Dessert was farmer's market strawberries on top of some semi-stale poundcake that we splashed with amaretto to make it moist again, with whipped cream on top. I am not a huge fan of almond flavoring, but the amaretto paired suprisingly nice with the strawberries.

Ok, well, this meal consisted mostly of farmer's market stuff, but we did use a couple of the CSA onions, so it still counts! The meal itself was very simple: grilled corn, grilled asparagus and grilled burgers with grilled onions. We got the meat from the farmer's market as well, it's from organic grass-fed free-range miniature cattle. It sure tasted good, and we only added a little garlic, A-1 sauce and salt & pepper to the meat before making patties. The corn was grilled in foil with some butter and chili-lime seasoning. We tossed the asparagus in some olive oil, salt and pepper and grilled that too. Same for the onions. We toasted the buns on the grill as well :) We may need to upgrade from a little Smokey Joe one of these days.