2 posts tagged “olives”
We have a LOT of catching up to do for this week! It was so hot during the week that we couldn't cook and ended up going out pretty much half the week. Most of the stuff we had from the CSA requires cooking, so by Friday we still had potatoes, fava beans, beets (and greens), turnips (and greens), green/purple/yellow wax beans, mixed greens and chard. That's a lot of stuff to try to figure out what to do with in only a couple days. Plus we got our first fruit box from the CSA as well. I don't think we'll be counting the fruit as part of the weekly challenge, since the pears we got are just now ripe enough to eat.
So, Friday cooled down a ton by comparison to the rest of the week and we took advantage of that to boil some veggies to make our favorite nicoise salad. The baby yukon gold potatoes were so good in this dish! Leah really did a great job with the lemon vinagrette and all the veggies were so perfect. Unfortunately, the purple beans turn green almost as soon as you start to cook them, so that was a bummer. The yellow wax beans were incredibly tender, must be because they are so fresh and new this time of year. We also used the other Lemon Boy tomato that we got at the Farmer's Market and it was really delicious. We'll have to grow some next year!
Leah had also cut up all the fruit that was getting a little overripe and decided to make waffles for breakfast to use them up. We found a super simple waffle recipe that turned out great: 2 cups Bisquick, 2 eggs, 1/2 cup oil, 1 cup club soda. It made a perfectly light and crispy waffle and was easier to make and tasted as good as the buttermilk waffles I made from scratch before.
We needed to decide what to do with the bag of mixed spicy greens. Leah's mom used to make a hot bacon dressing to go with dandelion greens, and I have never had that before, so we gave it a shot. The mixed greens were a little bitter, like dandelion greens, so it seemed like they would be a good match for the sweet bacon vinagrette. We also sauteed the turnips and added the greens to the salad mix to beef it up a little and tossed in the rest of the green and yellow wax beans. We were a little worried about the dressing, because it was REALLY sweet. We added more red wine vinegar and some dijon mustard and a liitle salt to cut some of the sweetness, but kind of resigned ourselves to the fact that it just might not be very good. You win some and lose some, right? So we tossed the greens with the dressing, added the turnips and beans and crumbled the bacon on top. And guess what? It was actually really good! I think the bacon bits helped a lot, but the greens were just bitter/spicy enough that the sweetness was nicely balanced. Oh, and the steaks turned out perfectly, too :P
So, Friday cooled down a ton by comparison to the rest of the week and we took advantage of that to boil some veggies to make our favorite nicoise salad. The baby yukon gold potatoes were so good in this dish! Leah really did a great job with the lemon vinagrette and all the veggies were so perfect. Unfortunately, the purple beans turn green almost as soon as you start to cook them, so that was a bummer. The yellow wax beans were incredibly tender, must be because they are so fresh and new this time of year. We also used the other Lemon Boy tomato that we got at the Farmer's Market and it was really delicious. We'll have to grow some next year!
Salad Nicoise is one of our old standby dinners. It's both delicious and super easy to make. A typical nicoise salad has boiled new potatoes, steamed green beans, hard-boiled eggs, olives, tomatoes, tuna and a dijon vinagrette. We generally substitute kalamata olives for the Nicoise oilves, because they are easier to find and are only a little bit saltier. We also usually use the pre-packaged lemon-pepper tuna steaks (either StarKist or Bumblebee brand) instead of the canned tuna. We just like it better :) This time we used some yellow wax beans in place of the green beans and some fingerling potatoes, both of which we got at the farmer's market when we picked up the CSA basket, with this recipe in mind. Leah made a nice vinagrette with some of the herbs from our garden too!
For dessert, I made a rustic tart with nectarines and some gorgeous raspberries from the farmer's market. I did it the lazy way, with store-bought Pillsbury pie dough. All you need to do is lay out the dough, pile some fruit on it, fold over the edges so they overlap, sprinkle a little sugar on top and bake for about 30 minutes at 425 degrees. Couldn't be easier! This is what it looked like before it went into the oven:
For dessert, I made a rustic tart with nectarines and some gorgeous raspberries from the farmer's market. I did it the lazy way, with store-bought Pillsbury pie dough. All you need to do is lay out the dough, pile some fruit on it, fold over the edges so they overlap, sprinkle a little sugar on top and bake for about 30 minutes at 425 degrees. Couldn't be easier! This is what it looked like before it went into the oven:
