bread, tomatoes, lunch

The bread is from King Arthur's website; it's called "Gruyere-Stuffed Crusty Loaves" or something like that -- though I used a combination of Cabot's extra shap cheddar and some Asiago, because that's what I had.

The slightly blurry tomatoes were harvested from our yard!!

And the bottom one is my lunch. Chickpeas, deviled eggs (made with chives from my herb garden), and a pepper.

That's all I have time for right now!

today's lunch

That polenta I made the other day? Worth its weight in GOLD, I tell you.

Yesterday I fried some up in a bit of butter for breakfast, with a fried egg.

Today I did it again, but ate it with the greens and beans from the other night (which are, of course, even better now than they were the first time).

a coleslaw miracle! (also notes on cannellini beans and polenta)

The miracle: my kids ate it. It's based on a recipe in The Best Recipe -- I chop the cabbage and grate th carrot, and toss them together (also a few radishes and scallions, this time) in a colander with about 1/4 cup of sugar, and 2 tsp kosher salt. I let it drain for several hours and then toss it with some oil and cider vinegar. Delicious.

It's also amazing how mild-tasting this cabbage was! I love cabbage, I have to say, but it is often quite strong-flavored. This one is so sweet and almost delicate.

I also made Barbara Kingsolver's "Disappearing Zucchini Orzo" which tastes better than it looks, honestly, so I didn't take a picture. It's kind of bland looking, but it tastes great.

(I called it "grated dinner.")

Finally, I cooked some cannellini beans from Baer's. I don't have good luck with cannellinis. I don't love canned ones because the skins are often tough, but when I cook them myself, well, the skins are also often tough. I don't have this issue with other kinds of beans, by and large. Once I tried the Cook's Illustrated method of soaking them in salt water, then draining them and cooking in fresh water. I was amazed by how soft the skins were, and how quickly it happened -- so quickly, in fact, that they basically dissolved and turned to mush before I noticed. Whoops. Not that that's always a problem, since I often mash them with garlic and olive oil, anyway.

Well, so I emailed the Rancho Gordo guy and asked him what he thought of this technique and he basically said, why bother? He felt that he has refined his technique well enough.

But I am feeling after multiple attempts that maybe cannellinis just have a tendency toward tough skins and this is a way to compensate. (Plus I sort of hope that somewhere in the ancient world there might be a precedent for this -- soaking them in seawater or something -- but I haven't seen any evidence for it!) So next time, I'll try the salt brine again and then watch them really carefully to keep them at a low simmer and test them early and often . . .

Today I decided that polenta would go well with the white beans and beet greens I'm making for dinner -- I really make an effort to vary the grains in our diet. It's so easy to eat wheat at every meal, but I just don't think it's the best for us. And since I bake so much bread (though not so much lately, as it's been hot) . . . I try to incorporate rice, corn, quinoa where I can.

I remembered reading about a cooking technique for polenta where you bake it in the oven instead of stirring it constantly on top of the stove, and I gotta tell you, I'm now a convert! It's cooling in a loaf pan in the kitchen as we speak. I used the cooking water from the cannellinis as the broth, and I had a little trouble figuring out the amounts, but it seems to have come together okay. I started out with 4 cups of broth and 2 cups of coarse cornmeal (Bob's Red Mill, I think), but after about 40 minutes it was REALLY dry. So I whisked in an additional 2.5 cups of water and gave it another 45 minutes, and I think it'll be good. I also stirred in some grated Romano -- maybe about a cup?

Look, I *do* own another pan!

The thing about the summer CSA (in past years) is that I sort of missed the ritual of the farmer's market. We've been participating in Drumlin's Winter Share since 2002, but they didn't start a summer share till 2005. We debated joining, because we've always loved going to Waltham's farmer's market. It's not a huge market, and there's only one organic grower, but we like participating in the community of it. The first couple of years, the Drumlin summer share more than met our needs, and we didn't get to the market much.

But this year, I really feel that we're getting less produce from Drumlin. Honestly, it's probably because they got complaints about too many greens (how sad!), but maybe it's also that they're trying to make more $$ at the farmers markets they participate it -- and really, we used to get SO MUCH for the amount we paid, that this is probably reflecting true market prices a little more accurately.

The point is, I don't begrudge it, particularly since the silver lining is shopping regularly at the farmer's market again! I bought potatoes, blueberries, a purple cabbage, and some herbs.

The top picture shows some gorgeous red potatoes that I quartered, lightly boiled and then browned in a pan. They were fantastic -- but I can't take much credit, because they were so wonderful to begin with. Cooking with perfectly fresh produce doesn't require much fussing, (I think Deborah Madison says something like, you don't need to do much to make it good, because it's already good.) Plus, the kids tend to like things plainer, anyway.

There was an extra bunch of radishes in the share bin at Drumlin last week, so I took it (as well as the greens someone took off their beets!) -- and our salads have been heavy on the radishes ever since. The kids really like the *stuff* in the salad -- if I serve Arij salad from the bottom of the bowl, he's perfectly happy. He might eat a piece or two of lettuce, but he loves crunching on the vinaigrette-soaked carrots and radishes.

I was thinking I'd put some radishes in the coleslaw I'm planning on making later today, too.

"Pasta Estate"

Okay, so I think of pasta with vegetables as pasta primavera, but it ain't primavera anymore (she panted in the 90 degree heat). I think "estate" is Italian for summer.

Here are a couple of pictures from the prep, and one of the salad we ate. I can look back at these in the depth of winter and be happy.

The top picture shows an onion, more fava beans, and red chard stems sauteeing, all from Drumlin. The middle pic is of the yellow squash I'd chopped, and the last one is the salad.

I am also happy because I used up the several batches worth of chard stems that I had saved, instead of just composting them. Often I just use them with the chard, and cook them a little longer first, but sometimes it's nice texture-wise to have greens without them. I cooked some last week -- a mix of beet greens and chard, and accidentally cooked them longer than I intended to, but they got silky smooth and so delicious!!

One final note: I am amused to notice just how much I use my 12 inch All-Clad skillet!

kissing broccoli

Arij caught me kissing the adorable little florets of broccoli we could take two of (first come, first served! the early bird gets the broccoli!) from our CSA today, inspiring me to use last week's bok choy and make stir fry for dinner. He thought I was crazy till I rhapsodized about how *cute* it was . . . I offered to take his picture kissing the broccoli and I'd post it to the blog. So here it is. It should be captioned, cute boy kisses cute broccoli.

fast food

Hermie was here yesterday to visit and help with kids, dishes, etc. Having her as my mother-in-law is a great gift from the universe. But I digress.

It got to be 5.30 and I hadn't thought about dinner (!)

What to do?

I chopped an onion, threw it in a pan with some salt on medium high heat. I diced up 3 yellow squash, and put those in the pan after the onions had browned. I let those brown a bit too and then added a cup of frozen corn, a tsp or so of cumin seeds, and a few shakes of Aleppo pepper. At the end I tossed in a cup or so of canned black beans and some minced scallions and cilantro (maybe a tablespoon of each?)

We ate it over quinoa with a little cheddar sprinkled on top.

The kids, of course, preferred the quinoa and black beans plain. Sigh.