6 posts tagged “salad”

Sunday we had to go pick up our new CSA basket for the week, but we still had a lot of stuff left from the previous basket! Since we liked the sauteed salad we made last week, we decided to have it with dinner to make use of the beets, fava beans and swiss chard. While at the farmer's market, we also spied some squash leaves at one of the flower vendors, in with the herbs they sell. We had these a few years ago and it's been hard to find ever since. It seems nobody thinks people will like them, but they are like eating the squash version of pea vines: very tender with a mild flavor. So, we got some to add to the sauteed greens. All in all, it was just ok. I just think we are done with sauteed greens for a while. They are getting tiresome. And the largest fava beans were mealy, which was a disappointment.

Sunday morning's CSA leftovers meal, however, was much tastier! I made home fries with the rest of the cooked yukon gold potatoes and some peppers from the market. I chopped up and pan-fried a couple slices of bacon, then removed the bacon bits and fried the potatoes and peppers in the bacon fat. Mmmmm, bacon grease..... Then I just crumbled the bacon bits on top when I served it. We were out of ketchup, so we ate it with some of the pepper sauce, which was awesome!

After the lard-fest of the weekend, Monday called for some lighter fare. We got broccoli and green beans as part of our CSA this week, but not a lot of either one. Leah got a big cauliflower to try pickling, but wasn't going to be able to use it all, so we added the rest to our dinner. We also got a couple HUGE heirloom tomatoes, one of which was getting smashed on the bottom because it was so heavy, and a large cucumber, so I made a salad of tomatoes, cucumbers and dill, with a light balsamic vinagrette. Leah tossed the broccoli, cauliflower and green beans with olive oil, salt, pepper and lemon zest and roasted them in the oven with a couple chicken breasts, and finished them with a squeeze of lemon juice at the end. It was delicious and filling and there wasn't a starch in sight!  So of course, we had rootbeer floats for dessert to make up for that :P

On Fridays and Saturdays, we usually find ourselves trying to figure out what to do with whatever is left in the CSA basket. Sometimes it's easy, and sometimes it's the real "challenge" part of the week. I don't usually like to throw a bunch of stuff randomly together and call it a meal, but that's kind of what we did last night. However, unlike a lot of times in the past, it actually worked! We had baby beets with greens, some wilty leftover mizuna and de-podded but still unshelled and uncooked fava beans. We also had shrimp to make as well, so a salad seemed like it would be a good match. Thinking of previous salads with beets and cheese, and liking the texture of adding beans to salads, gave me an idea to try a "sauteed" salad. It turned out to be very nice and all the flavors and textures went well together. The cherry tomatoes we added gave it a great extra pop of flavor (literally!) and the cheese added a little salty butteriness.

So, we scrubbed and boiled the beets and washed and chopped the beet greens and mizuna. We cooked the fava beans in the same pot with the beets, since they take about 5 minutes to cook. While the beets were finishing, we took off the tough outer shell around the beans, which is kinda fun, since they just squirp out easily. As the beets were cooling, Leah peeled and deveined the shrimp and prepared all the garlic we'd be using for both dishes. We decided to add some cherry tomatoes to the sautee as well, so we started with those in pan with the garlic, then added in the greens and finished them off with some lemon juice. As Leah was sauteeing, I cut up the beets, got a plate ready and got out some crumbled feta from the fridge. We needed to use the same pan for doing the shrimp, so she put the beat greens in the middle of the plate and then quickly sauteed the beets and the beans, to warm them up a bit, and poured those on either side of the greens. Rather than spend time tossing them all together, I just sprinkled the cheese over the dish and we each served ourselves from it, family-style.

Then came the shrimp, which was sauteed with more garlic, butter, a good helping of the pepper sauce we brought back from California, and some lemon juice. It was spicy! We sopped up the extra sauce with some french bread leftover from making BLTs earlier in the week. It was really a nice dinner, totally random and last-minute, but it worked!

Leah made roast pork in the slow cooker with the leftover pork loin, baby red potatoes, yellowstone carrots and a spring onion. She made a great sauce to go with it by adding some brown gravy mix to the crockpot and then reducing it with a little apple cider vinegar. We made a salad to go with it from the flashy trout's back lettuce and mizuna from the CSA, with some mixed heirloom cherry tomatoes and chopped up sugar snap peas.

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.

Last weekend on my birthday, we walked around Pike Place Market and got a big fat crab from the fish market (about 2 lbs). Sunday, we picked all the meat out of it and made a really nice salad with orange segments and avocado and a horseradish vinaigrette. Each salad had about one cup of meat! It was so delicious!

Also, Leah got this really cool French mushroom knife for me... I can't wait to use it! I think the mycological society will be impressed ;)
"This specialist knife features a curved Stainless Steel blade for collecting and cutting your finds to aid identification, a brush for removing dirt and insects and a serrated edge for cuticle removal."